News

Housing selections are under way, with changes under foot

New sign-up process, and Estabrooke is going undergrad

By Meghan Hayward

Posted on March 27, 2008, at 12:00 a.m.

Students signing up for housing will find the process – and possibly their halls – different from past years.

“The major change is we decided to use the same criteria for our apartments in the residence halls,” said Housing Assignment Coordinator Andrew Matthews. “Students have been asking us to look at seniority for quite some time so we finally decided to change it.”

With the new process, students receive a lottery number: their credit hours, multiplied by the number of semesters they have lived on-campus. Credit hours earned through Dec. 31 are included. The equation doesn’t include hours from spring semester.

“We then take our total number of students and divide them into half-hour slots to avoid stampedes,” Matthews said. “In past years housing was on a first-come first-serve basis and buildings like Hart and Oak are hot items.”

Students will be able to log on and select their room and hall during their half-hour slot and any time after that.

Matthews said they did a test on their server to see if students were having difficulty getting in and found some were successful – others weren’t.

Tara Loomis, Director of Residence Life, said last year they received a lot of negative feedback on the process and students who had lived on campus longer were not being rewarded.

Matthews said by changing the process they are rewarding the students who have been on campus the longest.

While the process of signing up for housing is different, the First-Year Residence Experience is staying the same, and all first-year students will remain housed together.

In addition to the changes to the sign-up process, there will also be some differences in buildings. Penobscot Hall will now only house Honors students, where last year it was only the third and fourth floors. The graduate center will be moving from Estabrooke to Stodder Hall.

“Stodder Commons has been occupied by the catering service, but with the renovations at Wells being completed the catering will be moved there,” Matthews said.

Estabrooke will now be a traditional undergraduate residence hall.

“Estabrooke has 111 singles, which are pretty popular,” Matthews said. “Stodder only had six, so we are taking away six singles but adding 111.”

Applications for the apartments in Patch Hall and DTAV were due on Tuesday and will be finalized by Friday.

The Honors College room draw will be on Monday in Colvin Hall. Those students will receive a card based on the number of Honors courses they have taken. The main selection process for undergraduates is from April 2 to 16. Students will be able to log on during their specified time slot and view available halls.

Loomis said the new process is fair across the board.

“The only complaints we have gotten are from students who want to keep the same room,” Loomis said.

Fourth-year anthropology major Jeremy Parker doesn’t agree with the new process. “I certainly feel that the DTAV-Patch process, especially, is needlessly complex and bureaucratic,” Parker said. “In the name of equal treatment for everyone they’ve thrown all of us that have put in our time to get into DTAV and Patch under the proverbial bus.”

Matthews said within two weeks all housing will be finalized and the new process will be complete.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.