U of T at Mississauga and U of T at Scarborough are expanding rapidly to cope with the influx of students into their campus this year.

With UTM enrollment increasing 25 per cent and UTS enrolment increasing 28 per cent in 2002-2003, students may be facing some difficulties besides homework this semester.

At the Mississauga campus, parking has become a major problem. Although the university is rebuilding the outer lots on campus, all the lots close to campus buildings have become full.

“Students are having to take twenty minutes to find a parking space and they become late for class. Or they have to worry about being ticketed from campus police for parking illegally,” said Kashif Yousuf, the Students’ Administrative Council’s UTM commissioner.

Adil Mirza, president of the Erindale College Students’ Union, said the college is trying to come up with solutions. “We have been trying to facilitate other places for parking, such as mall parking lots, and using a shuttle bus to take students back to campus, but that hasn’t worked.”

Housing has also posed a concern this year, with residences not being able to accommodate all the incoming students. The St. George campus uses hotels like the Primrose Best Western and the Delta Chelsea to accommodate the overflow of students. But the suburban campuses have to build new residences on-site, because there are few hotels within walking distance on either campus.

“With the anticipated growth, we have been providing accommodation to those guaranteed first year students, but not to returning students. Local, new off-campus housing is available for them, though,” said the residence office director for UTM, Jim Dunsdon.

Even finding space to teach is becoming a challenge. UTM built a giant, tent-like temporary classroom, called the Pavilion, to accommodate more lectures. The additional space is just barely enough, said Benitha Gengatharan, a director of student life in the office of Student Affairs at UTS: “That’s being used to its capacity.”

“I think that we’re fairly full,” Gengatharan said. “We’ve accommodated everyone to the best of our ability….We’re pretty much at what we can handle,” she added, saying that the Scarborough campus needs more money from the Superbuild fund, a provincial infrastructure programme that pays for much of the new construction at Ontario universities.

“Because of the limited space, we have classes running from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m,” she added.

Gengatharan said that the biggest problems at Scarborough are caused by the shortage of meeting space for clubs and faculty.

Incoming students can only hope that it will get better and that U of T will be prepared for next year.

But the double cohort is just beginning: the increase in admissions this year is just one small portion of the 1,822 additional full-time undergrads U of T will gain before 2005.

“There is only so much space and so many hours in the day. All we can do is support students, faculty, and teaching assistants,” said Cleo Boyd, who is director of the Student Skills Centre at UTM.