Freshman year: dorm. Sophomore year: better dorm. Junior year: townhouse. Senior year: beach house.
This is what most students envision as their housing future during their four years at Fairfield. But what would happen if a student didn’t receive a lottery number at all? This is the situation that some transfer students at Fairfield were faced with.
On Monday, Nov. 11, members of the classes of 2004 and 2005 received their housing lottery numbers via e-mail. While most students attempted to figure out the likelihood of getting their preferred housing next year, some transfer students in the class of 2005 faced a different problem.
Upon calling housing, these students were informed that they were not going to receive a housing number. Transfer students have been informed that they will go into the housing selection as a “ghost.” This means that the student will enter with the other students in their group of five or seven, but would not have a number of their own. With this system, a student who transferred to Fairfield University second semester freshman year would have their junior year housing affected.
Another student, who transferred to Fairfield this fall as a sophomore, was informed by housing that she would receive a freshman lottery number would simply not be able to live with members of the sophomore class next year.
“I was told that I will need permission from the Dean of Arts and Sciences to live with members of my class next year,” said Marisa Caban, ’05. “I am listed as a sophomore, register for classes as a sophomore and pay enough to go to Fairfield that I don’t feel I should need a note from the dean to live with members of my class.”
Neither of these students were able to speak to Gary Stephenson, the director of Housing at Fairfield.
Luckily these two transfer students have friends to enter the housing lottery with for next year, but others in this situation are not as lucky.
According to the newly merged departments of Housing and Residence Life, the cause of these problems may have been that particular students “fell through the cracks”. Fran Koerting of Housing/Residence Life said that all students were sent a list of names via campus pipeline earlier in the school year with all students who qualified to receive housing numbers for the lottery. The names of particular transfer students may not have appeared on this list because of credit transfer problems or some other system problem, and if a student noticed that their name wasn’t on the list, they should have contacted housing at that time.
“I don’t remember receiving a list of names. If I didn’t look at it, how should a transfer student know to read it?” says Lauren Fedechena, ’05. “To the people who work at housing it’s very clear how things work, but often they don’t send the students clear cut directions on what we need to do.”
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