No more rising sophomores are on the housing waitlist, according to Director of Residential Life and Learning Yolanda King.
As of April 27, there were still 125 students left on a list that was originally 180 after the lottory. By May 4, the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) was able to place all rising sophomores into on-campus housing for next year.
After being waitlisted following this year's housing lottery, many students were upset, which Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said he can understand. "It's a lottery process which means there are going to be people who are at the bottom of it who are going to feel victimized by fate," he said.
Because the current system is imperfect, he said that administrators are always looking for ways to improve it. In the future, he hopes there can be an "electronic, online-based, real-time lottery" which would make the process "more transparent" and allow students to choose their future housing from the comfort of their own rooms.
This plan is only in the very primitive stages, however, and details have not been determined. Reitman, for example, is still not sure how an online system would effect the waitlist. "I don't know," he said. "We haven't invented it yet."
According to Reitman, if created, the new system would have to be compatible with the Student Information System (SIS) that Tufts currently uses.
Another way that Reitman proposes to make the housing lottery better for all students is to increase the amount of desirable housing on campus and to get rid of the "spectrum of desirability" that currently exists. That way, even students who have low lottery numbers can still be content with their living situation.
In the meantime, he said that ORLL and the administration have been as cooperative as possible with suggestions that have been made as to how to better the system. "We've done about everything that the [ORLL] has been asked to do in the last couple years," he said.
-by Sarah Butrymowicz and Rob Silverblatt
