A room of one's own

With suite selection over and general selection humming along, the climax of housing hysteria has passed for this academic year. Rather than simply packing up the whiteboard and moving on to the summer session, housing administrators should take this opportunity to reflect on what did not go as well as it could have this year, in order to improve for the next.

One of the largest problems associated with housing is the limited information available to students prior to their selection of rooms. Columbia students spend a tremendous amount of time planning out their housing for the coming year—they go through possible combinations of suite composition, dorm choices, and back-up plans. And yet for all of their planning, everything can still fall apart at the moment of room selection itself, because it is only when selection starts that students are told how many rooms and how many suites of each kind are going to be available in each dorm. Prior to that, the only information that is made public is which rooms are designated for RAs and other special-interest housing. The rooms to be held out for things such as disability housing remain a mystery until the lottery has already begun. The entire process is—and most likely always will be—stressful for students. But the fact that such crucial information is only made available at the very end of this emotionally arduous process is unacceptable and easily amendable. Fixing this would not only help students plan in advance, but would also be helpful for housing officials, who would be less rushed as they try desperately to update the board throughout the day and avoid the panic brought on by such mistakes as this year’s EC townhouse confusion.

Furthermore, housing has actually worked successfully to alleviate some of the stress for rising seniors and sophomores through the senior regroup and sophomore pair-up options. However, this leaves juniors in a somewhat precarious position. There should be an option for juniors similar to sophomore pair-up. As it stands now, juniors in larger groups who can’t get into the suites they’d originally hoped for (which is becoming increasingly common as some dorms, like Ruggles, become increasingly popular) end up faring worse than sophomores. A junior pair-up option, in which 20-point groups could break up to stay in suite selection, would preserve the fairness of the system despite changing dorm demographics.

Housing will inevitably continue to be frustrating for students, and some will still be disappointed, have to double up, and get “shafted.” But more transparency earlier on in the process and less punitive repercussions for unfortunate rising juniors would allow the system to work more efficiently for undergraduates and administrators alike.