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NewslettersUSCB has waiting list for rooms for the first time; school starts Thursday
dbrownstein@islandpacket.com
843-706-8125
BLUFFTON -- For the first time since the University of South Carolina Beaufort opened student housing at the Bluffton campus in 2005, some students are on a waiting list to get a dormitory room.
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About 250 students moved into the student apartments Saturday in anticipation of the school year beginning
Thursday.
The four-year college will have more than 1,300 students
between its Bluffton and
Beaufort campuses -- the most ever, school officials said.
Also setting a record is the size of the freshman class, expected to be 375 students strong. Another 75 upper-level students have transferred to the university this year.
And, for the first time, the college will have a baseball team, its entry into traditional spectator sports. Also, a women's golf team will begin play. Last year, USCB's fledgling sports department fielded men's golf and cross country.
This school year is a turning
point for the college, a step toward becoming more of a
full-service institution.
"We feel like we've finally arrived," said Kate Torborg,
director of student life. "Up until now, we were planning so much,
projecting, thinking what was going to be here. Now, it's here."
The college's athletes will mostly live together in the
Palmetto Village student apartments. Bunk beds were added so five can share a flat. The rest of the school's resident students are four to a suite.
Like most students moving
into the dorms, freshman James Cole of Beech Island was excited about his first year of
semi-independence.
"It'll be a good experience to see how I weather it," Cole said.
He and his parents already had unloaded his belongings from an SUV and just returned after the obligatory trip to Wal-Mart.
"I'm pretty happy," said Cole, a middle infielder on the baseball team. "Everybody seems real nice."
He'll only be two hours from his parents, and their washing machine -- far enough but not too far.
His father corrects that, though.
"He's got grandparents an hour away, so he can get there more quickly and hopefully more often," joked dad David Cole, "because we're gonna be trying out our empty nest for a while."
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