Amid the neat rows of fixed-seating desks that fill the basement of Lockett Hall are the homely additions that line the back of the classrooms’ walls — wooden tablet-armchairs.
As of Feb. 17, there were 31 of these chairs in the basement classrooms of Lockett alone.
The chairs serve one purpose: ensuring maximum occupancy for classrooms that could soon be overcrowded as University enrollment increases. Class section loss, dwindling faculty counts and wear-and-tear on the desks already in place also contribute to the scarcity of seating.
Since 2003, the number of class sections offered each semester has fallen 17 percent, resulting in bigger individual class sizes, while the number of instructional faculty members has decreased by 12 percent.
The culmination of these factors has resulted in classroom overcrowding and leaves the University with a problem to remedy before enrollment numbers surpass the number of available desks.
The issue of overcrowding is reaching a peak after the problem subsided several years ago.
By spring 2005, the University had seen an 8 percent decrease in enrollment after Hurricane Katrina and another 3 percent decrease that came with higher admissions standards. That spring, students went to then-Chancellor Sean O’Keefe and requested that the wooden tablet-armchairs, which occupied the majority of general-purpose classrooms at the time, be replaced with larger chairs. This prompted the General Purpose Classrooms Project, funded by the LSU Athletics Department.
By 2006, more than 1,000 new seats replaced the wooden tablet-armchairs in 24 classrooms in seven buildings throughout campus, according to the Office of the Chancellor’s online archives.
Two years later, in 2008, enrollment started to climb while the number of instructional faculty and class sections continued to fall.
With more students entering the University and fewer professors with fewer class sections in which students could enroll, overcrowding again became a problem.
Although larger desks filled classrooms, the number of desks that could fit in the general-purpose classrooms declined.
“As a result, the individual station count was smaller than before, and we could not fit as many students in the classrooms when enrollment began to increase again,” said Patricia Beste, senior associate registrar.
The mid-size classrooms, like the ones in Lockett’s basement, are where the problems arise.
“What we see changing are the 40-50 person classes increasing to 50-60 person classes,” said assistant registrar Pat Yancey.
While Chancellor Michael Martin and Vice Chancellor for Student Life and Enrollment Services Kurt Keppler have stressed the importance of increasing the University’s enrollment numbers, the number of chairs that can fit those students is stagnant.
And when one of those fixed-seating chairs breaks, Facility Services adds one of the wooden tablet-armchairs to the back or side of the classroom until the original chair can be mended.
“We need bigger classrooms,” said Robert Doolos, University registrar. “We have taken advantage of what opportunities we have been given to increase classroom sizes in the past. For instance, we combined classrooms in Coates Hall and Tureaud Hall.”
Yancey said the construction of the Business Education Complex will not alleviate the impending classroom overcrowding problem because none of the classrooms being built are larger than those in the Lockett basement.
“I recently received a list of all the classes I cannot schedule in the new business school next fall,” Yancey said.
Doolos said the campus offers 218 general-purpose classrooms, and all of them are in use during “prime-time periods” in the mornings and early afternoons.
“We will be able to accommodate students,” Doolos said. “But we need to have faculty and students who are willing to teach and learn earlier in the day and later in the night.”
Until new classrooms are built to accommodate the growing 50- to 60-person class sections, the wooden chairs will probably still linger against Lockett’s basement classrooms’ walls.
 
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Contact Lea Ciskowski at [email protected]