This semester, changes are being made to the housing lottery in order to attempt to give priority to upperclassmen.

According to the email sent to students from Residence Life and Housing, each student in a mixed-class group will be assigned points according to class year. Rising seniors are assigned three points, rising juniors are two points and rising sophomores are one point. After assigning point values to each student, the total number of points are added together and divided by the number of students in the group to calculate the group’s weighted score.

If the group’s weighted score is 2.5 or greater, the students are able to select a room on the night assigned for rising seniors. If the number is between 2.0 and 2.49, students are able to choose on rising junior night. If the number is between 1.0 and 1.9, the group picks the room on rising sophomore night. Room selection nights will be April 14 through 16, with seniors choosing the first night.

In the past, the room selection process was organized so that rising seniors selected their rooms the first night, rising juniors the second night and rising sophomores the third night, regardless of what class years the students in the group belonged to. The updated process has been designed so that seniors are given preference:

“This year, we implemented a change to give further priority to groups of all rising seniors before mixed-class groups of seniors and any other class,” said Dan Confer ’02, Assistant Director of Residence Life and Housing. “This change was implemented because we feel it’s most appropriate developmentally and programmatically to have seniors in apartment-style housing.”

Although there are fewer students approved to live off-campus for the coming year, according to Confer, Residence Life does not foresee the available housing space being a problem.
“Incoming first-year classes have actually gotten smaller, not larger. Many administrators work on making sure our enrollment hits the right target. The past two years we haven’t had any forced triples for our incoming class,” said Confer.

In addition to the spaces not being threatened by large class sizes, construction of a new residence hall is being planned. No new houses will be available in “the short or long term,” according to Confer, but expansion of special interest housing occurs when a new program meets a need in the campus community that has not already been met by another program.