Is This the End of the AUBG Community?

Dear AUBG Community,

I have something to say: We are not a community anymore. 

I have been at the university for three years now, during which I have seen and heard the words AUBG Community more than any other two words. The small campus, the clubs, the events, the alumni networks, and the dorms in which everyone lived back in my first year made AUBG like no other university. It made it feel like “The Place to Be.” 

Things have changed. 

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a community is “the people living in one particular area or people who are considered as a unit because of their common interests, social group, or nationality.” Although it is a vague term, being part of a community essentially means belonging and identifying with a given group of people. 

I believe community values started deteriorating in 2022 when a strategic plan was accepted to significantly increase the student body. The rapid growth led to the first housing crisis in 2022 when it became known that there would not be enough spaces in the dorms for juniors and seniors because there were more incoming students than beds in Skaptopara Residence Halls. Now, most juniors and seniors do not live in the dorms and do not spend much time on campus. This creates a community gap. We no longer know each other, and most of the older students’ social contacts are now restricted to clubs, nationalities, and friend groups. 

Community life is also about trust and care. The situation last April proved that this was not the case in AUBG. 

On April 8, 2024, everyone received the room selection email with the slight difference that on the room selection dates, juniors and seniors can sign up for rooms only if there is availability. On the first day – April 17, juniors-to-be were informed that the registration process was put “on hold” and that third and fourth-year students would be on a waiting list until early May.  

ResLife explained that their goal was to gather information on how many students were still interested in living on campus and after that confirm rooms. In other words, there were available places, but back then, it was still unknown how many more freshmen could be or would be accepted.   

For most students, the unknown confirmation date in May was problematic because people were going to Work and Travel, international students were going back to their home countries, and others just feared that the apartments with reasonable prices and good locations would be taken by September. 

These fears made students from higher standings give up on living in dorms, and by mid-May, they had already found off-campus accommodation. Because of this, students believe that the crisis was intentional so the university could accept even more freshmen.

I believe mistrust escalated after receiving the first email addressing the housing crisis. The email did not mention that there would not be enough places for all juniors and seniors. 

“The increasing interest in AUBG from prospective students is a testament to our community’s prestige and commitment to excellence,” wrote President Ensign. 

In this email, I believe the term “community” was used to avoid accountability for the problem. Instead of admitting and apologizing for the poor planning of the administration, the president said that more people applied because of the current students’ achievements. 

This may be true, but the last official statistics show that in 2022-23, the acceptance rate was at 94%. This means that almost all of the students who applied got accepted. With no real selection process, the university's reputation lowers in the eyes of both faculty and students. The 2024 Bulgarian University Ranking results support this, and I have even heard people joke about it, saying that with the ongoing trend of accepting everyone, soon it will be better to claim that you have a high school degree than admit you have studied at AUBG. 

Although the official claim behind the expansion is that it aims to increase the university's global impact and essentially improve university life, the poor management of resources shows that AUBG is not ready for this step. Claiming that the university will be better and that the “community” will thrive after the expansion of Skaptopara III is a distortion. AUBG is already struggling to manage its existing challenges, and there is no guarantee that history will not repeat itself once Skaptopara III is expanded.

By failing to recognize its faults, AUBG has prioritized its “perfect” image over the community's well-being. But this does not make the issues disappear. In fact, students still bear the consequences of the university’s decision-making, and this frustrates them even more.

This is in no way arguing against the university as a whole. Indeed, it is a university like no other, but seeing the loss of the community spirit hurts. For me, the word “community” should be erased from the AUBG Dictionary until one can comfortably answer:

How do you become part of the AUBG Community?

As it stands now, the entry ticket is the tuition fee.

Editors: Spasiela Gizdova and David Mitov