News: Wingate still busy place over summer

Though school has let out months ago, the campus of Wingate is still a hustling and bustling place. “Summer at Wingate is actually busier in June and July than it is during the entire school year,” said Residence Life Director Chris Ziegler.
Wingate University offers students summer courses along with a place to live. But it isn’t the students who make Wingate an active campus, it is the people who come from outside.
Wingate hosts several different sports camps during the summer including soccer, basketball, softball, lacrosse, and football. The university also hosts a program known as Passport where churches from several different locations come together at Wingate and perform an array of activities such as service projects, daily worships, and bible studies. According to Residence Life, there are over 5,000 campers that occupy Wingate’s campus over the summer in 20 different camps.
Assistant Director of Residence Life Gary Bodford said, “It’s a logistical nightmare,” and “a vicious cycle.” Bodford also said, “We have campers leaving on a Friday and then new campers coming in on Sunday.” This only gives the campus services a little over a day to clean the dorms for the next batch of campers.
To live on the campus of Wingate during the summer can be a high price to pay. Students are charged $325 per credit hour, $360 for a room to live in per four-week session, $200 if one wants to eat in the café or at the Klondike, and another $200 for books.
For the high price Wingate University students pay to attend summer classes, the Beam Apartments are designated for them—8-person, 4-room apartments. Whereas the Passport Kids and summer sports camps stay in the single-person 4-bedroom apartments of Jefferson. They also occupy New Beam, North Campus, New Cannon, Old Cannon, and Helms. Several students have mixed feelings about the kids, who do not attend the university, walking around campus and staying in the seemingly “better” dorms.
Bodford said that the Jefferson dorms are designated for the Passport kids, whom have over 300 campers per week, and other camps, to make it easier for the camp. “They can contain the kids in one area,” explained Bodford. The Passport camps also bring a great deal of revenue to Wingate University. “It does help Wingate out tremendously… it will save some people’s jobs,” said Bodford.
Bodford also said when asked why summer school students could not stay in New Beam was because it was not ready to be lived in at the time of the beginning of the first session of summer school.
Junior Cheryl Vaccaro feels that these camps are positive for their campers. She said, “I think it’s a great opportunity that they are able to attend these camps that are on our campus. I wish I could have gone to a sports camp like the ones that are here when I was their age.” Vaccaro added, however, “On the downside there’s a lot of kids on campus and they are allowed to live in Jefferson and have a meal plan. I think that if they are allowed to have a meal plan, we should be able to have one too that’s cheaper.”
Junior Kelye Perry thinks that taking summer classes is another good opportunity. However, “I think we’re essentially paying the same amount (as the campers), we should have the same accommodations accessible to us, like free printing in Bridges and less expensive meal plans. $10 a meal is outrageous,” she said.
Bodford said that he tries to get in as many of a variety of camps as possible. “We’re branching out with different things,” he said. Bodford explained that Wingate had to turn away a huge national football camp because there wasn’t enough field space because other camps had to use the fields as well.

-- Kelsey Trabue