Administration Simplifies Room Draw for Apartments

The Housing Committee met Thursday to revise the room draw system for the student apartments, hoping to simplify and rationalize the complex system governing who can and cannot land a so-called Senior Apartment.  As Director of Residential Life Fid Castro explained, the administration wanted to make the process fairer for students who are behind on credits, while preserving the apartments as a sort of "reward" for seniors. Although the committee considered more dramatic changes (and wants to leave them on the table for future consideration) it settled on a fairly modest simplification of the lotto process.

In the past, students applied for apartments in groups of four, entering a weighted lotto in with each student was assigned a point value based on his or her number of credits.  This system divided students by semester as well as year, making it nearly impossible to get an apartment if you were a semester behind (or even one class short of completing a semester) without having another member of your apartment balance you out by being a semester ahead.

Under the upcoming system, which the administration plans to announce soon, there will be no more arcane points totals and unforgiving margins of error.  Students will simply be sophomores, juniors, or seniors, aligning the system with that used by the registrar's office and making it rather more generous in the process.  This system will allow students who are behind academically, even to the point where they will be December graduates the year after their proper graduation date to be counted as members of their entering class for the apartment lotto, benefiting students who took a semester off or otherwise ended up behind in credits.

The committee also considered a scheme in which each member of a group would be assigned an individual lotto number and the group could use the highest of them in consideration for an apartment but it was poorly received by the Deans and abandoned.

The new College Park apartments will be integrated with the revised lotto system.