St. Thomas Director of Student Affairs Karen Lange spoke about federal decisions affecting higher education and on-campus living arrangements at the Undergraduate Student Government meeting on Thursday, Feb. 27.
“We’ve had two grants now that have been canceled,” Lange said. “They’re both out of education and have impacted some of our students that are in the education program.”
Although these grants have been cut, Lange said that the university has found money to honor these students’ scholarships.
“I felt really good about how the university handled that,” Lange said.
Another federal policy change that affects the university is the rollback of DEI initiatives.
“We as a university are very committed to diversity, equity and inclusion,” Lange said. “We also will comply as we get orders from the Trump administration. We know there are some challenges to it, but it doesn’t change our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We were actually founded as a university to support immigrants, and that will continue.”
Lange also addressed housing concerns, following the release of 2025 to 2026 housing assignments.
“This year, we switched our process a little bit because we wanted to make sure all of our rising second-year students got housing, so about 400 rising juniors and seniors applied for housing, and 130 got spots,” Lange said.
For those who did not receive a housing placement but still want to live on campus for the 2025-2026 school year, Lange recommends joining the housing waitlist.
“If you want to live with three other people or two other people, that waitlist will be difficult to get off because there will be spots that open up but not entire rooms,” Lange said.
As for the future, Lange said the university is looking at expanding its residence hall options.
“We have been talking about building another residence hall, specifically for juniors and seniors,” Lange said. “It’s not going to happen this year, but I hope it happens in the next few years.”
Students should also utilize the off-campus student life website or look for signs outside of apartment buildings and contact landlords if they want to explore off-campus housing, Lange said.
Cecilia Wallace can be reached at wall1238@stthomas.edu.
