Housing sign-backs limit on-campus lottery system

Even after receiving hundreds of e-mails from concerned students and parents last year, only about 15 students showed up last night to the Residence Life Lottery Review Committee’s 2010 Housing Lottery Forum.
Despite the small turnout in the Multipurpose Room of the Cook Campus Center, one major problem students voiced was the sign-backs of Cook campus apartments for students in School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and Mason Gross School of the Arts, Executive Director of Residence Life Joan Carbone said.
“All students who lived in apartments were allowed to sign back, giving SEBS students priority on [the Cook] campus,” she said.
Last year, off-campus students were not allowed to join the lottery, but could get back on campus if a student in a Cook campus apartment “pulled” them in through the sign-back process, Carbone said.
It also guarantees housing for upperclassman for three years, she said. The University only holds places for first-year students, and even then, they may not see housing if they apply too late.
School of Arts and Sciences junior Prisca Park came to defend the sign-back process because she worked hard and researched people looking for another roommate to pull her into the apartments.
“I didn’t have a roommate. I did research … and if you really want to get into the Newell apartments, that’s what you have to do,” she said. “If you want it, you have to do it yourself.”
Carbone said this poses a problem, as the committee does not want to continue a system that forces students to manipulate the system just to live in the apartments.
The sign-back system is unfair, said Rohan Thakkar, a School of Arts and Sciences junior. It should be used as a privilege for upperclassmen, but ends up being a game of chance.
“It’s only a priority system for those who are lucky enough to get the lottery number,” Thakkar said.
Students should not have to fight for this priority, he said.
That reveals a problem with the lottery system, not sign-backs, Park said.
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences senior David Sorkin said he thinks the process should stay, but it needs stronger regulations.
“Instead of needing one person [staying to sign back], maybe you need three people or something of that nature, so you can’t just have one person monopolizing, say, the Newell apartment on Cook [campus],” he said.
The sign-back process began when Rockoff Hall and the University Center at Easton Avenue apartments were built, Carbone said. Many students were looking to get into these apartments, and sign-backs were a way to balance the demand with the older apartments on the Cook campus.
Another housing issue faced last year was that only students in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and Mason Gross had this preference in housing, she said. Other schools — such as the School of Engineering, based on Busch campus — did not have this option.
Several students at the forum said one of the reasons for this is because their majors are located there and it builds a sense of community.
But the School of Arts and Sciences does not have a single campus to identify with, as religion majors also travel to Cook and Douglass and chemistry majors travel to Busch, Carbone said.
“Why should SEBS have priority over any other school?” Thakkar said, noting that pharmacy and engineering students would enjoy priority housing for Busch.
Assistant Director of Residence Life Bill O’Brien said through the forum, the committee was seeking opinions from students about these many processes that seem unfair.
The University has a lottery system because there is more demand for housing than there is space, and the lottery system makes everyone equal, he said.
“But then you have sign-backs. So how can you justify that you need a lottery system, but you take roughly about 2,000 students out of that lottery system and guarantee them housing?” he said.
But the low turnout at the forum made this difficult.
Carbone said the committee had advertised, hung fliers and sent out e-mails to all students well in advance.
“What more can we do?” she said.
But students said there was not enough advertisement and cited a lack of caring, a non-centralized location and busy schedules for the low turnout.
Carbone said no matter what Residence Life ultimately decides, there will most likely be complaints.
“Frankly, I don’t know that there’s any answer that would make everyone happy, because any answer we come to about this is going to eliminate some group of people,” she said.