Shunned by students, Mizzou opens dorms to sports fans

The University of Missouri is planning to rent out some of its vacated dorms to make up for many of the school’s significant financial woes.

A housing request form available on the school’s website specifies that guests will be treated to a “furnished two-bedroom suite with four single beds” for the relatively low price of $120/night, which includes high-speed Internet access, bed linens, and towels, but not parking.

As Campus Reform has previously reported, the racially-motivated uprising that shut down Mizzou’s campus in 2015 cost the university close to a quarter of its freshmen class the following year, leaving the school worse off than it had initially anticipated.

[RELATED: Enrollment drop from Mizzou protests worse than feared]

The school continues to dig itself out of a $32 million financial hole brought on by both low enrollment numbers as well as a state legislature that proposed cuts of $1 million to Mizzou’s allocation of state funds and $7.6 million to the System’s administrative funds.

More recently, University of Missouri System President Mun Choi announced that he would be eliminating 474 jobs, 307 of which would be cut from the System’s Columbia campus, where the 2015 protests occurred.

The university has shuttered seven residence halls due to the drastic drop in enrollment, but disclosed plans Friday to rent the vacated dorm rooms out to eager sports fans.

[RELATED: Mizzou short on cash and desperate for students after semester of protests]

According to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the school’s Board of Curators introduced the new offering at its Thursday meeting, describing it as a temporary means of generating revenue while the school pursues long-term plans to fill its on-campus housing capacity by 2021 or 2022.

School officials are still debating whether to allow alcohol in the rented rooms, but have already decided to allow guests the ability to purchase meals at on-campus dining facilities.

Campus Reform reached out to Mizzou to ask whether any steps will be taken to ensure that guests do not present a threat to student safety while they are on campus, but did not receive a response.

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