As the term winds down, and summer break gets closer, one thing on that is on the mind of resident students is where they will live next year. Housing selection began yesterday in WAC and will continue through today. Students will choose their fate for the coming academic year. Mystery surrounds the event for those who have not been through it before and the mystery will be solved soon.
For first-year students, or commuters who want to give living on campus a try for the first time, housing selection occurs over the course of two days in different phases. The upper floor of WAC fills up with students coming in pairs, quads or by themselves in the hopes of getting the room they want on campus. Projected onto the screen in the Fireside Lounge is an Excel spreadsheet with the numbers of credits of all of the other hopefuls in the room at any given time.
Those at the top of that list get to move to the other side of the room to select their room, while those at the bottom face a difficult decision: sign up for the waitlist for the current phase, or stick it out until the next and go through the process all over again until they end up with a room somewhere on campus.
Rooms on campus that are up for grabs are in New Hall, Res/Rec, Kimmel, Patterson and Schneller. Starting with the 2017/2018 school year, the Naper Place apartments will no longer be an option for upperclassmen to live, bringing them back to campus. This seemed to complicate the process a lot more yesterday, with numerous upperclassmen being left out of their first choice dorm, New Hall.
Though she will not go through the process this year, senior Erin Bellie has experienced housing selection before. “Unless you’re a senior or have an insane amount of credits, it is an unnecessarily difficult process and all of your hopes and dreams of living in a sweet dorm will be crushed,” said Bellie.
Whether you’re going for a single or a quad this year, may the credit hours be ever in your favor.
