Housing Office to implement new room draw policy

Residential colleges will no longer be zoned by class year, Manager of Undergraduate Housing Angela Hodgeman said in an e-mail. Certain rooms — which will be unavailable during the room draw process — will be designated for incoming freshmen with the goal of bringing them in greater proximity with their RCAs.

The total number of beds reserved for freshmen will equal the freshman-class size. The changes implemented for the 2010-11 room draw were a response to student concerns expressed over the past several years, she added.

One major issue arose when "zones would sometimes close with desirable rooms still available," Hodgeman explained, citing an incident last year when "one of the highly desirable five-room quads in a residential college was assigned to freshmen" due to zoning restrictions. Hodgeman added that the new policy eliminates the problem of draw groups which are forced to split up when the limit in a given zone is reached.

The policy's second objective is to enable RCAs to more effectively reach out to their advisees.

"Having their advisees clustered around them should afford each RCA a better opportunity to connect with them," Hodgeman explained.

Several RCAs said they supported the new change.

"I definitely think that making sure freshman rooms are close to RCAs would be a huge improvement," Rachel Sverdlove '11, an RCA in Rockefeller College, said. "I have people from two entryways, and I see some of them all the time, but some not often at all."

Hodgeman said that the new policy aims to address this physical separation.

"There have been some instances where a freshman was in a single room on the fourth floor of a building surrounded by juniors and seniors, while the rest of the freshmen in that zone were on the first floor with the RCA," she said.

Sarah Sims '11, another RCA in Rockefeller College, said that living in closer proximity will encourage more communication between RCAs and their advisees.

"If you think of all the ways you run into people you know, living by them is the best way," she explained. "Otherwise, they wouldn't be reminded to talk to me, since I don't have classes with them and I don't have the same friend group as them."

Sverdlove noted that the policy would ensure "a good amount of interaction and chance meetings, and that will be very helpful for RCAs next year."

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Simon Krauss '11, an RCA in Forbes, said in an e-mail that the RCAs dicusssed the policy change at their weekly core group meeting. He said he thought the change was not much of an issue, because the RCAs were "mostly in support" of the new policy.

He said, however, that "the more important thing was that strategic RCA placement was supposed to help reduce the RCAs from 16 to 15."

Last fall, the University announced that one RCA position would be eliminated from each residential college due to budget cuts.

The University will assess the new room draw policy following this year's room draw and will determine if any adjustments are needed, Hodgeman added.

"Hopefully, this will foster a better sense of community and support for freshmen while still offering the most desirable rooms to upperclassmen," Hodgeman said.