Freshmen frustrated with lack of communication about housing lottery

Members of the freshman class filed into Cousens Gymnasium throughout the afternoon and evening on Tuesday to pick on-campus housing for their sophomore year.

Some freshmen found the experience less than spectacular, but senior Resident Assistant (RA) Randy Newsom said that considering other factors, the process went well.

Newsom helped at the housing lottery last year as well as this one, and said, "With all the turnover in ResLife this year, [the lottery] was put on such few people. It just seemed less smooth but not necessarily more disorganized."

Associate Director of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) Lorraine Toppi left several weeks ago. Toppi's job position included coordinating the housing lottery.

According to Newsom, ResLife enlisted the help of Student Services for the first time this year. Students Services were responsible for setting up and running the computers and screens that displayed a listing of available rooms to waiting lottery participants.

While waiting at Cousens for his lottery number to be called, freshman Andy Title questioned the lack of communication between ResLife and students.

November's e-mail "said we'd receive an e-mail later on with more information about the actual lottery process," Title said. "They never sent us anything though -- I was pretty unsure about this -- I still am."

At the end of November, students received e-mails from the ResLife Office notifying them that their housing lottery numbers were available online. Current freshman lottery numbers ran from a high of 2,999 to a low of 1,500.

A junior first-year RA, who wished to remain anonymous, said that because ResLife held office hours and informational sessions, it didn't send out a follow-up e-mail.

"Also, RAs were supposed to forward a recent e-mail from ResLife explaining the lottery process to their residents," the RA said.

It seems, however, that many RAs neglected to do so. Freshman Amelia Denegre said she did not receive an e-mail explaining the lottery. "I think that the process would've run much more smoothly if I had received an e-mail detailing how the lottery was going to work," she said. "The only reason I knew to come to Cousens for this was through word of mouth."

Title heard of the lottery in the same way. "I had to ask sophomores who live in my suite [about the lottery]," he said.

According to Director of ResLife Yolanda King, there were four informational sessions regarding the housing lottery offered this year for freshmen.

Some freshmen were able to secure full suites in Hillsides Apartments this year -- an opportunity rarely available to rising sophomores -- due to low upperclassman interest in Hillsides apartments.

According to another first-year junior RA, this lack of interest was probably due to the fact that "it's really hard to find seniors that want to live in a double because the Hillsides suites are made up of four singles and a double each."

The RA said that all in all, the housing selection process had been going "smoothly" and that "it's pretty self-explanatory once you get here."

Many freshmen, however, were upset that they were never told Hillsides was an option available to them. To apply for a Hillside apartment, students had to sign up for an additional lottery that took place on March 9.

"It makes me a little angry and a bit jealous that I did not know that there were [Hillsides] apartments opening," freshman Luke Holden said.

Freshman Zach Landau and five of his freshmen friends will live together in a fourth-floor suite in Hillsides next year. Landau said that he did not hear about the March 9 apartment lottery from ResLife and that he had to "find out about it on my own while going through the ResLife website."

West Hall was the first dorm to fill up, followed by Wilson House, Miller, Stratton, Latin Way and the few rooms still left in Hillsides.