Residential Life (ResLife) is considering substantial changes to the University’s General Room Selection (GRS) process, sources from ResLife confirmed on Monday. Such changes, which ResLife would implement by the spring of 2007, include overhauling the housing lottery and adjusting rank numbers for disadvantaged students.
The changes that ResLife is considering reflect students’ perceptions that the current GRS process is unfair, said Director of ResLife Fran Koerting. In November, ResLife hosted three open forums where students could voice their complaints and suggest improvements to GRS.
“We know the room selection process can be very anxiety producing, and disappointing when students don’t get the housing they had hoped for,” Koerting said. “After discussing some ideas for improvement in the Undergraduate Residential Life Committee meetings, we wanted to bring them to the larger student population for additional input.”
The current GRS runs by a class-standing ranking system. For every completed academic year at the University, a student gains one point. Rising seniors have 3 points, rising juniors have 2 points, and rising sophomores have 1 point. Each student may enter the selection process individually or in a group of up to six students. ResLife assigns a ranking to each party randomly, based on class standing. Individuals and groups select their housing for the upcoming year, in rank order, during four consecutive room selection nights in the spring.
Students who apply for off-campus housing or program/community-based housing on campus do not participate in general room selection.
Koerting said that the current housing system often provides housing options based more on luck than on preference or need. Changes would potentially eliminate room selection night for sophomores, allowing the administration to assign them directly instead.
“This would eliminate the frustration of having to go to room selection night, wait for their rank number, and get frustrated as they watch those ahead of them select the housing they want,” she said.
If the housing lottery remains, Koerting said, ResLife will consider changing the ranking system to compensate students who receive the lowest rankings in their class and who are pushed out of class-specific housing—for example, juniors who do not live in an apartment. ResLife would give such students priority ranking the following year, allowing them to choose more desirable housing.
“Each summer, a portion of the rising sophomore class goes home without having selected a room assignment, since we need to wait for attrition to happen to know where the spaces are going to be,” Koerting said. “A portion of rising juniors that wanted Low Rise or High Rise apartments are not able to select them. And this year, we had freshmen who were assigned to triples. It has been proposed that adjustments be made to their rank number the following year so that they have a better housing selection experience.”
Attrition, or a decrease in enrollment, is determined each year by students who go abroad, take a semester off, or transfer.
Joe Newman ’09, who is living in 202 Washington St., disagreed that the housing lottery is an intrinsically unfair process, citing his own experience as a student who ended his freshman year with no housing.
“I don’t begrudge the administration for my bad luck in the lottery,” Newman said. “If they want to compensate students the next year, that’s fine, but I think it’s more important that they give priority to students without housing sooner. Right now they keep your housing number throughout the spring and summer, making it difficult for such students not just to get good housing in the first place, but to get better housing if they have to. ResLife should use lottery numbers for initial housing choices, and then throw them out.”
Laurenellen McCann ’09, another resident of 202 Washington St., agreed that a full overhaul of the lottery system might not be what students need.
“We shouldn’t have to be so insecure about our housing that we have to consciously worry about it during spring semester,” McCann said. “I remember room selection night was definitely one of the most stressful nights I’ve had here, and I agree we need to change it, but I don’t think that sophomores should be housed in the same way as freshman. At least with this system we know not just who we’re rooming with but who will live around us. Freshman only get an abstract idea of where they’re going to live.”
Leave a Reply