The 9-to-5 campus: PSU needs more than just housing

Portland State has been marketing itself as being “different” for a long time, but as the new construction around campus proves, the administration has realized that becoming a more traditional campus has its benefits.

Blumel Hall’s about to reopen, and new apartments are popping up around campus. But in order to fill up all those beds, PSU has some big changes to make.

One of the biggest is the fact that this campus is pretty much closed down by 7 p.m. (though the lights are never, ever turned off). The library stays open until midnight—and it’s open 24 hours a day during finals week—and we finally have a 24-hour computer lab in Broadway, but that’s it.

Universities are 24-hour by nature, and at PSU that seems to go unrecognized.

Don’t get me wrong—the Broadway lab was a huge step in addressing that. I can’t even count how many times I had printer or computer problems last year and wished that a lab were open. Having a 24-hour lab would have made my life so much easier last year.

There’s also a big lack of activities or entertainment in the area.


So what do we have? Well, there’s Subway, the only late-night eatery on campus. All of the 24-hour food carts have irregular hours or have closed down recently. There are bars and pubs, but that just contributes even more to the fact that a “traditional” college student, coming from high school, has nothing in the area to do. PSU’s campus doesn’t have much to offer minors.



Obviously this isn’t solely an issue of 24-hour things. I know one of the university’s biggest draws is the fact that our campus is really integrated with the city, and there’s plenty to do in Portland proper. But the thing PSU is going to come up against is that there are very few incentives to live on campus compared to other areas.

Portland is a great city, but the “city is our campus” approach is going to come back to bite the administration when it comes to filling up beds on campus. University Pointe still hasn’t reached full occupancy, even though vacancy rates in Portland have been terrible for a couple of years. More housing projects in the area are in the works (thanks Urban Renewal District), but low-vacancy rates are still the case for a lot of Portland.



University housing isn’t particularly cheap. It’s not as expensive as most places in downtown, but unless new dorms and apartments are really nice or really cheap, they’ll have a hard time competing with Goose Hollow or the already existing apartment buildings.

More 24-hour restaurants and facilities would open up the campus and make it a more attractive place to live. A 24-hour gym and 24-hour library are the most obvious ones, and they’re common at most other state universities. The library is crammed full of people at all hours during finals week, and keeping it open all the time would lead to similar results. Late-night homework is never limited to finals, and a quiet, distraction-free place to study is much needed.

Gyms that stay open 24 hours are incredibly popular and offered by more and more apartments; it would just be a good service for the university to offer the same.

Both the library and the Academic and Student Rec Center are primarily staffed by students, which would also allow students who are willing to work late at night to get a lot more hours.



This is my second year in campus housing, and I like it well enough. The convenience factor and having utilities paid for are mainly what keep me here. But there are a lot of better options, and PSU needs to be able to compete with them if it’s going to keep expanding into the traditional student market.

This means becoming a little more like Oregon State University and the University of Oregon and keeping the campus running all day long. Housing and higher education are both expanding industries; PSU has a lot of work to do to if it’s going to be competitive in both.