Due to post-COVID enrollment numbers, Pierce Hall will be closed down starting in the fall 2022 semester. According to Kristi Schulte, director of residence life and housing, MSU’s lower enrollment numbers follow a post-COVID trend of fewer students enrolling into college. Lower enrollment means fewer students in on-campus housing. To maximize the space available to them, residence life and housing made the decision to consolidate their resources, beginning with closing Pierce Hall. Pierce residents received emails on Jan. 25 informing them that they need to look at other housing options for the fall, but the decision to close Pierce has been in the works since October of 2021.

“At this point there’s no intention to use Pierce in the upcoming year. If that changes we’ll definitely have some information out there, but we’ll pretty much go ahead and it will be an empty facility,” Kristi Schulte, director of residence life and housing, said. “We’ve developed our reapplication process where returning students sign up [early] for housing next year…Those students will actually have an opening… to preserve some of the existing community even if they choose to move to a different building.”

These students will be classified as displaced residents and will be able to apply for housing before juniors and seniors. Lauren Kam, residence hall director of Pierce and McCullough-Trigg, said that this early sign-up will aid in preserving the community of Pierce Hall.

“It’s so hard to think about losing that culture, because Pierce is a culture. It is an accepting home where people feel really comfortable and close,” Kam said. “I think we can do that in Killingsworth. I think we can create a culture that isn’t just a replica of Pierce but will be better.”

According to Kam, this culture can be attributed to the significant international student population and friendly, accepting environment. Chance Thompson, mathematics freshman, said he was sad to leave what felt like a growing residential hall. 

“It sucks because, even last semester we had already seen some growth in it, like the second floor lounge was getting renovations. It was just so sudden, but if it happens then it just has to happen, I guess,” Thompson said. “Currently they’re talking about having a lot of the Pierce residents go to Killingsworth because it’s going to become coed. So, I’m just gonna follow the crowd, basically, go to Killingsworth with them and see if we can build up the same community we had over there.”

Even though residents and residence hall director alike are aiming to preserve the community of Pierce Hall, students like Thompson or Jason Thomas, first-floor Pierce Hall RA, are still mourning the loss of their home.

“I feel like Pierce Hall had the connection [where] everybody knew everyone and it was just like a real home. It was kind of like a village type situation. That’s probably what I would miss the most,” Thomas said. “Fortunately I am a senior so I won’t really be coming back here next semester, but I feel for my residents and the residents of Pierce… Some of them were even saying Pierce is the reason they haven’t dropped out yet. It’s kind of just sad to see them have to move from what they’ve established as their home into a new building. I feel like it has to happen.”

Schulte recognized that Pierce has become a real home for students. For this reason, Pierce residents were the first to know about the building closing down, but Pierce’s doors won’t be shut forever.

“I anticipate that within the next couple of years we’re going to see, you know, [as] we always want to see huge growth in terms of freshman classes and we’ll need to open very shortly. We’ll definitely need to put Pierce housing back into our housing rotation,” Schulte said. “We know that community is important to students. Students move into a building and they connect with people that they’re living with. They make friends and that’s important. It’s an important part of the student success puzzle. We know that students who are connected to campus and connect to a group of peers are far more likely to graduate than those who are not. So it’s important for us to put community first.”

Although it was not originally planned as a goodbye, Kam and her staff are in the process of planning a Pierce pride week near the end of the semester to send off the building and acknowledge the strong community that its walls cultivated. The pride week will possibly include a talent show, the awarding of the title “Mr. Pierce Hall,” ping pong or basketball tournaments and other fun events for students.

“When we found out the news I think we were all grieving a bit. I think they need that closure to just be like ‘Yeah. This was a really great year and we’re going to make these memories in a different building.’ They may never get that back,” Kam said. “I haven’t told my staff this, but I’d like to do something really special, whether it be at the end of Pierce pride week or just at the end of the school year with just like a remembrance wall or maybe a candlelit vigil. I know that sounds really dramatic but at the same time I just want everyone to get up and just talk about what was so special about their year because you can tell everyone has so much love for Pierce and I want them to have that opportunity to say goodbye and have this moment of mourning and grieving.”