Sarah Carracher
News Editor
Housing selection, an event dreaded yet highly anticipated by students every spring, may change its format for the 2014-15 academic year.
Residence Life held an open meeting on Oct. 23 to discuss with students “what went well” and “what could have gone better” with the housing selection process last spring, according to Associate Director of Residence Life Amber Zifzal. A second meeting will be held on Nov. 6.
“At this point, I am not sure that we are looking to change the process,” Zifzal said. “We are well aware that the process last year was not a pleasant experience for a lot of students, and don’t want to make the same mistakes twice.”
At the second meeting, they hope “to look at the feedback that students gave and talk about resolutions.”
However, there is no guarantee that the housing process will change. “This may mean doing a process that was very similar to the one in the past but communicating it differently or looking at a different timeline — the options are limitless,” Zifzal said. “Student feedback and input is so important to this process as students know firsthand what went well and have ideas about how to make things better.”
Many students have expressed displeasure that they live in less-than-desirable living situations despite the fact that many people with higher lottery numbers were given better options.
David Hirsh ’16 and his roommate, who had one of the top 200 lottery numbers for their class, were told that they could only choose from six rooms in the Holden Annex.
“In all seriousness … it was a pretty bad experience,” Hirsh said. “Obviously we were pretty pissed. The real anger came, however, when we found out where our classmates with far worse draw numbers were living.”
“Rooms in Douglass were given to people with numbers in the 1300s and people with even worse numbers were placed in big rooms in very nice houses,” Hirsh continued. “Both of those are options my roommate and I would have chosen over the Annex and should have been able to because we had a better number than those people.”
Students such as Hirsh are frustrated by the system and the fact that its results sometimes contradict the process when students with low lottery numbers end up in less desirable residence halls than those with higher numbers.
“We are obviously pretty frustrated and confused as to what happened. How did we, in a lottery system where we supposedly did better, get so screwed over?” said Hirsh. “The very nature of the system for us was basically disregarded and it feels very unfair.”
Maddie Petersen ’14 has likewise been disappointed with the housing selection process during her years at Wooster.
“My sophomore year I was waitlisted for housing. My roommate and I received an email in June [or] July about being able to place us together in the Annex,” Petersen said. “We accepted this offer, only to later find out that our friends who had worse draw numbers than we did ended up in Kenarden.”
Petersen’s experience was worsened by the condition of her room in the Annex, which is by popular opinion considered to be the worst residence hall on campus.
“My roommate and I lived in Wagner our freshman year and we thought nothing could be worse than that, but the Annex was,” she said. “We kept killing ants. We realized that there was some sort of infestation. We showed our RA and eventually an exterminator was brought in to spray everything down.”
Optimistic and armed with a good lottery number, Petersen and her roommate picked out a room in the basement of Andrews for their junior year.
“We immediately went and checked it out after housing selection and we planned accordingly for things to get for our room over the summer. In June we received another email saying that due to more males than females, they had to move us into Douglass.” As a junior, Petersen lived on a hall of mostly first years and sophomores.
“The process needs to be fixed because it’s not fair to have this happen year after year,” she said.
For her senior year, with a thought-out plan to live with her friends in a hall of singles in Armington or Stevenson, Petersen was again disappointed by the housing selection process. “We all ended up in three dorms and nothing went our way. The school used to offer a ‘friendship hall’ program that more or less guaranteed you living with your friends. They got rid of that option.”
“As seniors, we all ended up with okay draw numbers for singles. We were under the impression that Armington and Stevenson were going to be senior only dorms. I have two sophomores and two juniors on my hall of eight in Armington, yet my senior friends with better draw numbers than these underclassmen ended up in Douglass because Residence Life claimed to have no more singles available in Armington or Stevenson.”
Situations such as these appear to be inexplicable and contrary to the nature of the lottery system. Students who wish to participate in the discussion and contribute possible solutions can attend the meeting at 9 p.m. Nov. 6 in Lowry 119.