Each of NYU Abu Dhabi’s classes have a higher enrollment number than the previous. The Class of 2023 had 430 students, the class of 2024 had 490 students, and the class of 2025 had 530 students.

This year, we’ve witnessed the arrival of the loudest and proudest Class of 2026. Yet, apart from all the bragging potential the big class size of 688 has, many across classes feel that campus’s existing problems are further exacerbated. This limitation is being felt now more than ever — in the buzzing Marketplace, D2, laundry rooms, library study rooms, study lounges, during course registration, even in places that were never thought to get crowded before, like D1 — the list goes on.

Food is a priority for most of humanity in general, but first-years especially take their meals, or lack thereof, very seriously. The long, long lines at both dining halls, and how some food items seem to be permanently out of stock (chicken shawarma I want you), highlight NYUAD’s inability to meet the growing demands. Once you’ve finally navigated past the counters, the battle begins in the search of either a friend’s table that you could slide your tray onto or one without a personal item like a bag, a purse, or even a pen placed on it to mark occupation.

Nine times out of ten, if you go during rush hours, the dining halls have no space for you. When that happened to me recently, I looked to grab a meal at the Marketplace, but to my dismay even that place was filled to the brim with students, faculty and visitors during all reasonable meal times. We also observe a psychosocial impact of such overcrowded eating spaces, especially for first-years, who have confessed to dealing with “D2 anxiety”: the feeling of being anxious to visit D2 due to the overcrowded atmosphere, long lines and seeing too many people you know.

Another frequented place facing the brunt of overcrowdedness is the laundry room. Now, not only is it extremely frustrating to navigate around five other people in a room with a comfortable capacity of four, it really takes a lot of mental fortitude to jump from building to building in search of a functioning washing machine to accept your dirty load of laundry. Apart from the leisure of doing laundry in your own building, there’s also the issue of having functioning machines to operate. The bottom line is that the higher the enrollment number becomes, the more machines are used, and therefore breakdowns happen way more often. And though there’s no dearth of email addresses that we can write to, it seems no email to facilities ends with a working laundry room.

NYUAD’s systems are being stretched to their limit, not only in terms of lifestyle-related but also academics-related services. Whereas upperclassmen got at least one course they actually wanted in their freshman fall, that’s something that some of us this year couldn't relate to. From personal experience, ALL of the PE courses simultaneously filled up within mere seconds of registration opening. It was almost as if the rat race began the moment course registration opened up, where a misplaced click would cost you that FYWS and a washroom break would cost you your major.

Although the library is technically open until 2 a.m., it doesn't make a huge difference because the study rooms are always occupied, and given the amount of collaborative projects first-years are assigned and the professed benefits of group study, these rooms being available is absolutely essential. After walking down the study room hallway twice, shamelessly peeking into each and every one, all the while noticing that even the spaces on Level 2, outside the study rooms, are all full, one looks to the ground floor and finds yet another sea of occupied seats. Save for squatting on the floor with our little laptops open, there’s not much one can do to find space to work in the library. And it’s not just the library, any and every study space — from the Baraha study rooms to those tiny couches next to windows and doors in C2 — all seem occupied perpetually. With each passing day, the empty desk in my room seems like more and more of an attractive option to study.

Of course, steps to improve the situation are already being taken, and such efforts will hopefully be continued as well. Dining hall staff are working faster than ever, doling out chunks of rice and curry and swiping our cards at the speed of light. Student Government is receptive and tries their best to communicate service requests, or even requests for more items at the convenience store, on a regular basis. Library staff have taken to patrolling the study halls to remove belongings that have been unattended for more than 30 minutes to try and free up more study spaces for students in need.

As first years, our intention is far from demanding full aid for everyone, the abiding comfort of dorming in singles or the enduring relief from ever having to stand in line. With well over 600 students, the issue has lurched from offering leisure to maintaining functionality.

Given that many resources are shared across all years, is it fair to upperclassmen who also have to bear the brunt of more and more first-years entering each year? Wouldn't the administration be much better off planning more sustainably to ensure that services are maintained and provided to everyone, instead of widely increasing intake and then dealing with resource capacity issues as they arise? It is for this reason that I sincerely hope the administration finalizes the decision to cap incoming class sizes, so that they only bite off as much as they can chew and allow all of us adequate space on this tiny island.