A place as a student at Iowa State is a hot commodity these days, as shown by enrollment figures that indicate a sudden increase in the past few years. In fall 2008, 26,856 students enrolled at Iowa State. Last fall, in 2012, 31,040 students enrolled. That increase of more than 4,000 students, which is the enrollment of countless liberal arts colleges around Iowa and the rest of the United States, has brought serious infrastructure problems.

To its credit, the university and its support departments such as Dining Services and the Department of Residence have done their best to mitigate the crowding caused by that increase. Those efforts have not prevented the relegation of many students to temporary accommodations in the dens of residence halls rather than actual rooms. In 2011, about 200 students lived in temporary housing. In 2012, more students lived in their house dens for a while.

In response, the university has taken a few actions to increase the number of students it can house on campus. This year the Department of Residence began to construct additional apartment buildings in the Frederiksen Court area that, upon the project’s completion at the end of this year, should be able to house 720 students.

Additionally, in order to put students in university housing earlier in the 2013-2014 year, at the April 24-25 meeting of the Iowa Board of Regents the university will offer a plan to lease apartments in Campustown and out by Mortensen Road. If approved, Iowa State will lease properties at a total cost not to exceed $2,741,040 in order to “temporarily add 503 bed spaces to the residence system.”

A quick glance through the Daily’s archives, however, shows that that problem is not necessarily a new one. In 1998, about 160 students lived in temporary housing. In 1999, about 200 students lived in temporary housing. In 2001, about 370 students lived in temporary housing. Even before then, having to use temporary housing was a perennial problem.

Since President Steven Leath has said that Iowa State could grow to 35,000 students, it is doubtful that this problem will go away soon, if at all. The Department of Residence is understandably cautious about making big investments in new buildings that cost lots of money to construct and maintain, but clearly the need is there and will be there for the foreseeable future. The time for investment, then, has arrived.

If there are concerns about the long-term stability of an enrollment that approaches 35,000, the buildings added to Iowa State’s long list of facilities could be configured so that walls could be removed and the rooms could easily be converted into classrooms and offices so that the real estate can remain in use.

At the heart of this problem is a struggle to serve students and meet their needs. Historically, that problem has encountered resistance from an equal need to sustainably use the resources available to the university so that it can stay open and continue to serve students in some way. The Department of Residence’s desperation to accommodate new students in university housing, however, now rises to a threshold that, for the sake of ethics and morals, requires the construction of new residence halls.