Students may be sleeping more soundly this spring, with a better idea of where they will be living next year, if student and administration discussions now underway gain ground.
Tufts Community Union President Jeff Katzin has made changing the housing lottery system one of his priorities, and the Office of Residential Life and Learning and the Dean of Students Office are discussing the same issue.
Under the current system, students can draw a low lottery number three years in a row. The lottery numbers determine the order in which students can choose
on-campus housing.
Both the Tufts Community Union Senate and the administration are considering a change that would split the lottery numbers into three tiers to help students predict their housing options.
Rising sophomores, Dean of Students Bruce Reitman said, would be assigned a tier for each of their next three years.
The current system gives rising sophomores, juniors and seniors a random lottery number each year. Since the numbers are assigned independently, a student could receive any combination of good, bad, and mediocre numbers.
"We've been pushing for a three-tier system," Katzin said. The Senate's service and housing advisory committees have been discussing a tiered system for several years, Katzin said.
"One year you get a high lottery number, one year a low one, and one year a middle range one," he said. "It's about fairness - so that no people end up getting really lucky or getting really low numbers three years in a row."
Director of Residential Life and Learning Yolanda King said the system would allow "rising juniors and seniors to better predict their housing options, since they are not guaranteed on-campus housing."
Reitman said more predictability in the system would benefit students. "I think it would take a lot of anxiety out of the Tufts experience," he said. "Your classes and your housing are the two most important parts of the college experience."
Student feedback will be key in making the changes, Reitman said. He wants to hold a campus discussion about possible lottery changes. "The last thing I want to do is to try and be responsive and end up with a system that makes things more stressful," he said.
The most difficult aspect of housing to predict for administrators is the number of seniors who wish to live on campus.
"We've had approximately one third of our junior and senior year classes on campus each year," Reitman said. "But the fluctuation is so variable and so dramatic. Last year we had 27 percent of seniors on campus; this year it's 65 percent."
Reitman said there is no complete proposal for the changes. "The devil is in the details," he said.
The University must consider how the changes would impact students who study abroad, the number of students who chose to enroll in the University, and how transfer students would be given lottery numbers, Reitman said.
Reitman said any system must also address whether or not students could trade their tiers and whether or not the seniority system - where seniors get to choose housing first - should be maintained.
"If you design the system so that you could trade," Reitman said, "what impact would it have if 300 people who have an A range number trade it away for a C range number while they study abroad?"
Sophomore Rachel Smith said the study abroad issue is important. "I anticipate being abroad junior year, so if I get a really good number that year, so what?"
Without knowing the details, Smith said, a tiered system would still be an improvement over the current one. "It would be more fair, although a crappy number for a senior is still way better than anything a sophomore could have," she said.
The Office of Residential Life and Learning expects "to make a final decision about the tier system prior to the release of lottery numbers" in the spring, King said.
