Sunday saw Residence Life’s housing selection, the annual event at which students looking to live on campus next year are given the opportunity to choose from available rooms. Priority was assigned to prospective residents by way of a lottery; those interested in on-campus housing were assigned numbers that served as indicators of where they stood in line for selection.
This system has always been far from simple. Students with lower numbers are able to invite those with higher numbers into their rooms and apartments. Returning residents are also able to “squat” and keep their own rooms, and can even bring others into the arrangement without going through the lottery process at all. This yields a very complicated procedure, with a great deal of uncertainty for many. This may be part of the reason why almost 50 people were left without a definite place to live after Sunday’s process.
While Residence Life does not guarantee that upperclassmen will be able to find on-campus housing, this is the first year in recent history that the lottery system failed to place all interested students. Before now, this had led to some tour guides suggesting that the “no guarantee” policy is just a formality, and that in practice, nobody who requests it is denied housing. Indeed, people have come to depend on that idea; the selection process occurs so late in the semester that the apartment-hunting season is almost over—most leases have already been signed.
Given this, it is highly unfortunate that people have been left in the dust like this, and Sunday’s events are a clear indication that the system should be overhauled. Ensuring that everybody is accommodated in the fairest possible way is hardly an easy feat, and we recognize that there is no simple solution to the problem. With that said, as the semester is drawing to an end and final exams approach, worrying about where they will stay next year should not be students’ first concern right now. While the Office of Residence Life is doing all it can to ensure that everyone will have a bed, the current situation is stressful and rather unfair to those affected.
If we are to prevent a similar situation from happening in the future, we need to start the process of looking for ways to improve as soon as possible. Given the impending possibility of mandatory on-campus housing for second-year students, the system needs to be streamlined. Otherwise, this year’s crisis is doomed to repeat itself, but on a much larger scale.
