The guy from ECU that recently did an overview of football for all AAC teams for 2023-24 season stated (I think) that CLT is a commuter school. I am pretty sure that I heard him correctly. I would not consider CLT to be a commuter school.
I believe the University states 7K students on campus. I guess there is another 1-2 K living within 1-2 miles of campus. I think University at Chapel Hill, South Carolina, NC State, and Georgia report their number of students on-campus at between 7-9k students.
CLT appears to be in the mix with other larger schools in our area. I guess the other question is do students stick around on weekends. These are important questions to consider as our sports teams improve and more fans are expected to be in the stands.
Last thing to consider is the university experience. When I was at CLT it was pretty wide open. Then Reagan upped the drinking aga to 21. I assume that dramatically changed the college experience at CLT. Has the experience changed more dramatically at CLT than other schools? Has the administration cracked down hard on drinking or does the university turn a blind eye? And how does 5 points in Columbia still thrive when most of the students cannot legally drink?
I would like to hear from others with knowledge or first hand experience regarding my questions. Do you think CLT is still a commuter school? Why is it or isnāt it? Thanks for your response.
I canāt find my post, but a while back I pulled actual data and the # of students on and around campus is much higher than your estimates. I believe it was closer to 15k-17k within walking distance. We have added a good amount of dorm rooms and there are numerous new apartment complexes.
This is not anything close to a commuter campus. I went to Tennessee for grad school for 3 years and if we are a commuter school, so is UT. We probably have very comparable levels of students living on or nearby campus, with equivalent levels of weekend activity with ONE exception: 6 (7 in their case) Saturdays per year. Thatās the one thing we need to fix.
But otherwise, hell no, the commuter school rhetoric is decades out of date. We have 30k+ students with about 60% of them living right there.
Iād like to see the redevelopment of the Kohls shopping center as per those plans into a more student centric development. That will help too.
Advocate I appreciate your comment. I think that you are one of the most knowledgeable posters on the CLT forum. Did I hear the ECU guy wrong? I donāt think so? So how is this outdated theory still being circulated and what can be done to change this viewpoint?
Seriously. A 15-20 minute slow drive through and around campus will immediately shut anyone up.
Short of that, a good area flyover video of the area along with the published numbers I referenced before (IIRC I took them right from the university site - I just canāt remember where) should also do the trick.
Stuff like that. Thereās probably better. That was 30 seconds of effort.
Heck, even though this is negative, itās an example of all of the crazy apartment building by campus:
Ditto:
We have so many kids trying to live on campus that we cannot supply enough on campus housing, despite building so many new dorms. That is NOT indicative of a commuter school.
Believe it or not, I believe people that still like to put the hyphen ā-ā in the school name helps this myth stick around.
Also, 30 years ago, they considered anyone not in an official university dorm or apartment as a commuter student. Even though for most of the off campus apartments students lived in, the students would walk/bike to campus.
When I was there, I lived in 916 Scott Hall. Then the plan was for 30K students with roughly 33 percent of that being on campus students. Now that the university has hit 30k students, does anyone know the latest planned overall student population and on campus student population long term?
We have more students on and living adjacent to campus than total students at some ābigā schools. We have had and continue to have an image problem.
Thatās not the only thing we lack. Campus is still mostly dead on the weekends. No more on campus parking for freshmen and keep all the dining options open on the weekends. It will lead to a push for significantly more vibrant student life and more of the university feel.
