ResLife is smartly reevaluating the GRS protocol and is reportedly having some difficulty generating student feedback. But the problem, we suspect, is one of timing, not apathy. Were the housing forums held in November held again in April during GRS, attendance and interest would be much higher.
It’s Fran Koerting’s job to think about housing year round, but that doesn’t mean students want to do the same. ResLife, come talk to us in March or April, we’ll probably be more vocal then. Still, we understand that big policy shifts take time to create and implement and we’re excited about some of the early ideas ResLife has proposed.
While renovating dorms and rebuilding woodframes undoubtedly improves student residential experiences, it also costs huge amounts of money. ResLife’s proposed changes to GRS will have important long-term effects with minimal costs. While searching for services to cut across the board, the University literally cannot afford to pass on opportunities to better student life for free.
Giving students who receive low picks one year a higher priority in picks the next just makes sense. It’s a simple, constructive change that would prevent many students from being unduly stressed by the housing process, and one that would come at a very low cost.
Likewise, the possibility of eliminating selection night for rising sophomores does away with some student anxiety at minimal administrative cost. If the University can develop an effective method for automatically placing sophomores in housing, no one is going to miss sitting in SCI150, watching bookmarks disappear and then friendships strain as groups of four are forced to split into a group of threes and twos and ones.
We’d like to remind ResLife that we haven’t forgotten about last summer’s housing debacle, with too many students and too little places to house them. We hope ResLife takes a serious look at the strictness of its off-campus housing policy, and the way that affects individual students. Yes, we’ve been over this, and yes, last years’ numbers may have been a fluke, but we can prevent headaches, on all sides, by loosening the restrictions for off-campus eligibility.
ResLife, keep the ideas coming, let’s talk later.
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