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On the night of the annual ‘townhouse picking,’ groups of sophomores sit in the Barone Campus Center to anxiously await the fate of their junior year. As more groups approach the housing chart and the choices dwindle, however, many students see their possibilities for fun in the junior community start to fade away as they reluctantly accept a housing assignment in the suites.
Traditionally, each individual student received a computer generated random lottery number before the lottery process starts. After he or she formed a group with other students, the best number of the group became the group number.
These individual numbers were never posted prior to the lottery. The numbers were assigned and then whittled down after students formed groups. Then, the group numbers appeared on a board outside Residence Life. The new, simpler process should create less controversy, according to Residence Life.’
‘In the new process, we do away with individual numbers and move strictly to group numbers,’ said Associate Director of Residence Life Jason Downer. ‘These are also computer generated after the lottery process starts.’
The students have spoken, and random group lottery it is.
The survey aimed to determine whether a merit or GPA based lottery system would improve the lottery process. Overall, 46 pecent of students voted for Group Random Lottery, 36 percent voted for a GPA/Credit-based system and’ only 18 percent voted for a de-merit system.
‘I think it’s the fairest way to go about it,’ said Alexandria Hein ’11, who participated in the survey. ‘In a group of seven friends, you are not going to get all seven with 3.5 averages or a straight disciplinary record. That’d be a boring group.’
‘I think the frustration from the lottery comes when students are unable to get their preferred housing; for example, juniors living in the townhouses. Not every junior group will get a townhouse and approximately 30 percent of the junior class will live in Claver Hall,’ said Downer.’
Chalk it up to poor planning or increased enrollment, Fairfield University has come under fire over recent years from angered students denied their housing preference rights. For this reason, the Office of Residence Life conducted a December survey about the lottery process in conjunction with their ‘quality of life’ survey. Almost 1,100 students responded, eager to voice their opinions.
‘This will have the most impact on the OCB [off-campus boarding] lottery, because students can be in group sizes from one person to five people,’ said Downer. ‘So making it group like we did this past year, makes a difference.’
The off-campus lottery is also following the same process. The University currently releases approximately 400 students to live off-campus.
‘This ‘group’ lottery process was used this past year for the OCB process and I think it worked out well,’ said Downer.
This difference may have come too late, though, for some students who feel that the University’s housing system is still faulty.’
‘The root of the lottery system problem is the fact that there shouldn’t be one,’ said Lauren Levy ’09. ‘Use the thousands of dollars we filter into FU to give each well-deserving student a choice and a chance to live exactly where they want.’
Though Levy currently resides at the beach, she has had her fair share of housing lottery problems. Residence Life moved her from Gonzaga Hall to a randomly assigned suite in Claver during the summer before her sophomore year. After that, she did not get a townhouse and lived in Claver for a second year. In addition, she was not in the first group of students to initially be released off-campus.’
‘When you have happy students, you have stress-free students,’ Levy said. ‘Stress-free students are more likely to succeed academically, subsequently excel in their careers, and inevitably strengthen Fairfield’s standing.’
Many students happy with the system gave the general consensus that they had indeed gotten lucky.’
The statement from the Campus Life: Residential Life and Housing section of the Fairfield University Web site reads:
‘Seniors are at the top of the priority list, followed by juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. While absolute guarantees can be difficult, it is safe to assume that seniors will get their first choice of housing. Juniors have a good chance as well. Sophomores will have a range of residence halls from which to choose, including the Ignatian Residential College in Loyola Hall, and freshmen are randomly assigned to one of the freshmen-only living areas.’
The group system for OCB could underwrite the ‘safe’ assumption that seniors will get their first choice of housing.
Though not much different from years before, Residence Life’s efforts to listen to the student voice aims to improve the system in place and appease upset students.
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