URBANA — On the desk in her dorm room, Pari Kulkarni has an empty pot. It used to hold a bamboo plant, which was a gift from her mother. But the plant died over her month-long winter break, when she was back home in India.
Like the other nearly 5,000 international undergraduate students who attend the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Kulkarni has to decide whether to stay on campus or make the long trip back home during her breaks.
Currently, the U of I offers break housing during fall, winter and spring breaks of the academic year, at a cost of $40 per night. During breaks, meals are not available through the university dining halls. In 2024, there were 534 fall break housing contracts and 175 winter break housing contracts, according to U of I data.
Some students are calling for the university to provide better housing and meal options over breaks. The issue affects more than just international students; students who live out-of-state or those who don’t have a place to travel to over break are also affected.
The International Student Advisory Board, which Kulkarni is a member of, wants the U of I to give students the option to stay in University Housing for no additional cost during breaks and provide meals at dining halls or nearby locations. The group has a change.org petition circulating, with more than 130 signatures so far.
Kulkarni, a freshman in computer science who lives at Pennsylvania Avenue Residence Hall in Urbana, decided to stay with her friends in an off-campus hotel during last year’s fall break. She said it was easier and financially better not to use university break housing, which she said would’ve cost her $850 to $900.
“Our off-campus housing was $800, including the free breakfast option,” Kulkarni said.
She noted that the hotel was more conveniently located near grocery stores, whereas living at PAR would’ve meant sourcing meals from nearby restaurants, some of which have reduced hours during campus breaks. The MTD bus service is also reduced during breaks, making it more difficult to move around campus.
On top of all that, Kulkarni said the lack of people around campus can affect students’ well-being.
“The campus is sort of like a ghost town,” Kulkarni said. “The dorms get really lonely and there’s almost like just two or three people in the dorms on your floor.”
The push for better break housing options
The International Student Advisory Board’s petition for enhanced break housing and meal support cites three major issues: limited and costly housing options, lack of meal provisions and impact on academic success and well-being.
Arshiya Shah, an ISAB board member and international student, said work on this petition began four semesters back and that the issue is a pressing concern.
“This was something that didn’t just affect international students but also out-of-state students because Thanksgiving break or spring break — it’s fairly short for someone to just go back home,” Shah said. “This [petition] is something that’s supremely vital.”
Several comments on the change.org website offer their own testimonials.
“Students that come here don’t all come from generational wealth like in some other universities and our meal plans and housing bundles are made to give just not enough or exorbitantly too much (either way we are losing a lot of money),” a user named Jasmine wrote.
“I am so concerned about food and going out in this cold just for a meal. $40 a night should at least be enough for two meals a day,” another user named Jaswitha wrote.
Yixuan Liu, a freshman in bioengineering, said that break housing can be difficult even for those who don’t stay on campus because of how quickly the residence halls close and how late they open — especially for students who may have multiple legs of traveling and have to match up travel times.
“The Peoria charter and the Greyhound bus — they all have limited seats and they tend to fill up pretty quickly,” he said.
Typically, university housing closes Saturday at 3 p.m. and reopens on Sunday at 9 a.m. of breaks. Liu suggested that the university offer different pricing on different days.
“They could try to make the first couple days cheaper, and then in the middle, it could be more expensive,” Liu said. “That way, overall, people still save money and it could also be more convenient for those who may have to stay a day or two.”
Yulrin Son, a freshman in bioengineering from Texas, said she plans to stay on campus for spring break.
“I travel so much and for such long times, I think it’s a big pain, personally, to travel for a long time for a shorter stay [at home],” Son said. “For me, I don’t like it that I’m paying such big amounts, but I don’t really have a choice.”
Son said some breaks are so short that it’s not worthwhile to travel home. But also, not all students celebrate the holidays that take place during the breaks.
“A lot of international students don’t share the idea of Thanksgiving — we don’t go back home for that specific reason,” Son said.
Other campuses offer break housing at no additional cost
ISAB did a comparative analysis of break housing in other universities, like the University of Illinois Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.
The University of Michigan keeps residence halls open over fall, Thanksgiving and spring break. During winter break, they have housing accommodations for an additional cost.
Dan Wright, the associate director of operations at the University of Michigan, said providing that option to stay on campus is part of Michigan’s core values as a large public university.
“Our students may not be able to really thrive if they have instability even for a couple of weeks throughout those periods, especially in the middle of a semester, where students are really busy,” Wright said. “To navigate the closure of a residence hall in between those periods would be really challenging and really goes contrary to our mission.”
He said the campus does have reduced operations during breaks, so they account and recruit for staff accordingly.
“It was right about 40 students that stayed of our 9,000-plus undergraduates on campus [for winter break] — that’s a really, really small percentage that were here,” Wright said. “But again, that’s 40 students that have really demonstrated the highest need to be here and those are 40 students that it was really important for us to support.”
U of I Housing says they appreciate the feedback
Chris Axtman-Barker, associate director of marketing and communications for U of I’s university housing, said it’s likely that schools that offer no-additional-cost housing account for the cost of break housing in their total fee that is assessed to all students who live on campus.
The biggest barrier is staffing: Axtman-Barker said there aren’t many people interested in working during U of I’s breaks.
“We want to make sure that as many staff as possible are able to do what they want with their holidays — that’s also very important to us,” he said. “As you would imagine, most people want to go home to their own families.”
He said the U of I has worked hard to keep break housing rates as low as possible as a balanced-budget department, meaning that all of the money from housing fees goes back into services for students in housing. He explained that the closure of dining hall facilities was due to a lack of demand.
“We used to offer meals during break periods, and we stopped doing that because students weren’t using them, which we thought was strange at the time,” Axtman-Barker said. “What we saw was that we had about 10 students a day using those meal periods and that’s just not enough to justify the cost of operating the dining halls.”
He also noted that U of I does offer residence halls with 12-month contracts, therefore the breaks are covered at no additional cost. Those halls are typically intended for graduate and upper-division undergraduate students.
With regards to ISAB’s requests and the student petition, Axtman-Barker said University Housing welcomes the conversation.
“We appreciate the feedback, we always do, sincerely, because I think conversations like this help make campus housing better and that’s what we all want, even if everyone doesn’t get what they want out of the conversation,” he said.
Students hold onto hope for better break housing options
Yulrin Son, the freshman from Texas, said even though the university’s attempts to provide better break housing options in the past haven’t worked out, she’d like to see them try again.
“I know that as a really big school, it’s hard to change these things really quickly,” Son said. “But at least, trying small things out. Maybe like, ‘Let’s lower the price a little bit, see for next year or next break and compare that.’ If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
Nikia Brown, the associate director of Intercultural and Global Learning from LAS International Programs, has endorsed the ISAB petition.
In an email response about University Housing, she said international students already pay much more for their education compared to domestic students.
“Adding more fees to international students’ accounts for break housing would widen an already large equity gap that exists between domestic and international students,” Brown wrote.
She also said that the university could come to a compromise with meals. One possibility would be opening one dining hall during select hours and/or offering packed meals for students.
Kulkarni, the freshman from India, said the goal of the ISAB petition is to make a positive change for international and out-of-state students and anyone else who would benefit.
“We want the students to be comfortable [with] the option of staying over the breaks, and not look at it like, ‘Oh, I’m going to face so many more difficulties staying in the breaks,’” Kulkarni said. “We don’t want them to be bothered by, ‘Oh, when is it that I’m going to have the next meal? How much should I spend? How much should I budget?’”
Ashrita Mohanty, a board member of ISAB and an international student, said the group’s next steps include looking for endorsements from other international student departments, to represent more voices and perspectives.
“I think one of the most common feelings that every international student can relate to is entering campus with their life packed into three suitcases, heavily jet lagged and wanting to figure everything out immediately,” she said. “And the feeling when you’re on campus, when you’re overwhelmed with everything — it’s unparalleled to anything else, and it’s so difficult figuring out things like break housing.”