Dining disaster: Students who live at The Flats next year will be required to purchase a meal plan under housing proposal
Wichita State’s housing proposal has a major flaw.
The Flats, a privately owned and Wichita State operated apartment complex, is fancy — fancy enough to be equipped with luxurious amenities, including a fully furnished kitchen and deluxe granite countertops. If you live at The Flats next year, you’ll be recommended to ditch your lavish kitchen and state-of-the-art appliances for meals at Shocker Hall.
Scott Jensen, director of housing and residence life, introduced a list of new housing proposals to Student Senate last week. Of the proposed changes for next year’s housing rates, was the requirement for occupants of The Flats to purchase a meal plan to dine in cafeteria in Shocker Hall. Currently, only Shocker Hall residents are required to purchase a meal plan.
An unlimited meal plan currently goes for $2,030 per semester, and the proposed cost for the same plan next year is up more than 6 percent to $2,165.
The Flats was originally designed as a housing alternative for upperclassmen that desired to graduate from Shocker Hall. After an occupant shortage and closure to Fairmount Towers, WSU moved roughly 300 students to The Flats, bringing the apartment complex owned by MWCB, LLC. to full capacity.
A kitchen inside the room of the Flats at WSU.
A primary selling point of The Flats was the fully loaded kitchens. After a student graduated from a two-year residency in Shocker Hall, they could transition to a lifestyle reflective of a real adult with adult responsibilities, like cooking and meal planning. The Flats provides all the tools to make this a reality.
President John Bardo aspires to retain more students on campus. With The Flats, occupants can walk home and prepare a lunch all within an hour break — all without leaving campus.
Yet, WSU isn’t satisfied with students cooking in their own kitchens.
Traditionally, a meal plan goes hand-in-hand with on-campus housing. Not here. Assigning a $2,000-plus meal plan doesn’t make sense in this equation.
This and other proposals — including an increased lease rates at a cost of $4,500 per semester for a one-bedroom room in The Flats — has not yet been approved by the Kansas Board of Regents.
David Murfin, chair of KBOR, is co-owner of MWCB, LLC. He has up to this point, relinquished himself from any votes involving The Flats, and willingly identified himself as a conflict of interest at the last KBOR meeting.
August 19, 2017 is the second day of move-in at Wichita State.
MWCB, LLC. originally intended to offer The Flats to the public, but they later agreed they preferred WSU students to occupy the complex. They elected to have WSU Housing and Residence lease the facility because they would know best how to cater the facility to Shockers — not because they struggled to fill the nearly 300 spots with a mere 37 occupants signed up just weeks before the August move-in.
Students who were moved from Fairmount Towers to The Flats paid the rate they would have paid at Fairmount this year — $2,190 per semester for a double room and $2,950 for a single room.
A bedroom in The Flats at WSU.
Should these proposals be approved, next year those students will have to make the choice of paying a $1,500-plus semester increase or finding an off-campus option. This, packaged with a $2,000-plus semester meal plan provision doesn’t make sense.
More requirements don’t make The Flats any more marketable.
If WSU finds these proposed rates and amendments approved, they’ll likely find The Flats challenged with deficient occupancy come the 2018 fall semester.
The proposed rates for The Flats next year are $4,150 a semester for a two-bedroom apartment and $4,500 for a one-bedroom apartment.
Evan Pflugradt is the former sports editor of The Sunflower. Pflugradt past served as the publication's Editor in Chief, Opinion Editor and a reporter....
Matt Crow is the Sports Editor for The Sunflower. Crow is a senior at Wichita State majoring in communications with an emphasis is electronic media. He...
Tanat Maichan (Tat) was a photographer for The Sunflower. Tat majored in aerospace engineering with a minor in mathematics. He is from Bangkok, Thailand.
Jason Carmichael • Nov 7, 2017 at 12:13 am
The simple reason the flats only had 37 residents prior to closing Fairmont is price. Less than 1/2 mile from the flats is a completely full apartment complex, and it caters to students just the same, except it’s price is in line with student budgets. At no time has ANYONE thought the rental prices of the Flats was a “Good Deal”.
$1100 + for a fully furnished dorm room, is simply nonsense. Call them whatever you want though, anything that is on campus and temporary housing, is still dorm rooms.
Dazed and Confused • Oct 12, 2017 at 3:15 pm
I don’t get it. Isn’t The Flats a private apartment complex? Owned and operated by Regent Chair Murfin and MWCB?
The lease WSU quickly created after getting caught without getting KBOR approval was done in a manner that made it a day or so shorter than was required to get full KBOR approval and was of a length to only need approval by KBOR CEO, Ned Flanders.
Does a meal plan requirement mean WSU will lease The Flats again next year and already knows that? Would that mean the quickly created lease was a mere ruse to bypass policy to just get the Flanders stamp of approval and not full KBOR since that policy was not followed?
Why isn’t Regent Chair Murfin and MWCB taking full responsibility of the private apartment complex that they proposed in their April 15, 2016 letter to Tomblin and WSU? Let them “lose their ass” as Andy Schlapp so eloquently stated.
Do you think that this overall scheme is a backdoor plan by WSU to use Murfin and MWCB to build a residence hall and bypass Regent facility construction policies and requirements like was Bardo’s original plan with Shocker Hall?
Surely not…….
The initial plan for a residence hall that was awarded by WSU to Dave Murfin, Nestor Weigand, Jr., Ivan Crossland, Jr., and Steve Barrett (MWCB) also included Steve Clark of Clark Investment Group and Johnny Stevens of March Oil Company. Were Clark and Stevens part of the MWCB group that got permission to build the private apartment complex?
The original pro forma from MWCB/Clark/Stevens that got them the project as a residence hall showed a return of $52M – yes, $52,000,000 – to WSU over the 30 year life of a bond. How in the world could WSU turn down $52M in revenue that would go to housing and would then go to MWCB (and Clark and Stevens is they are part of the private apartment project) as a private facility? What was the “financial concern” from Bardo that shelved the project as a WSU residence hall that then turned into a private apartment complex? Was $52,000,000 not enough?
Fake Pres. Bardo • Oct 21, 2017 at 4:15 pm
The reason isn’t so much as money as theme. If WSU built a new dorm that’s “old thinking”, but a private partnership is “new” so it has to be better.
I think its similar to groups that have a good hearted mission statement; the groups then believe thay are infallible because their mission statement says they are doing good. Much like animal rights and animal adopting groups. If we just outright killed stray dogs and cats with cheap efficient bullets, look at how much more money and resources these groups would have to feed and shelter the homeless people of their community.
As always,
Fake Pres. Bardo
WSU Administration does enough "cooking" • Oct 12, 2017 at 12:10 pm
Apparently all the “cooking” the administration is doing with the books, the numbers, enrollment, badges, senior citizen homes and everything else unethical they are doing, they simply can’t allow any more “cooking” on campus. This is just another way for them to fatten the wallets of those who financed the project. It literally gets more ridiculous every day.