At 1:11 p.m., her designated room draw time, Salina Yuan ’13 furiously logged into the room selection website. She found the room she wanted and picked it, but 10 minutes later, her selection had been canceled.
Yuan wanted to select a single but found none remaining in Rockefeller College by her draw group’s designated selection time. Instead, she decided to draw into a double, believing that if she claimed a room without filling it, she would be able to hold it until another student joined her. She realized this was not the case, though, when she lost her selected room at the end of her draw time.
For several students, the details of the room draw process have proved confusing due to unclear information provided by the Housing Department. Lisa DePaul, associate director for student housing, said in an e-mail, though, that the majority of feedback she receives from students is positive.
For students like Yuan, housing mixups can prove “very stressful.”
On Thursday, Snow Li '11 accidentally drew into the wrong room in Scully.
"I meant to draw into a room that has a shared bathroom with a friend's room and [is] across the hall from other friends, and I accidentally drew into the wrong room,” she said. “I called Housing about 10 seconds after I drew and told them that I made a mistake, and they told me there was nothing I could do about it.”
Li said the room she intended to draw was still available days later but the Housing Department refused to let her switch rooms. "I guess the most shocking part was that I called right after, and they still weren’t willing to do anything about it."
Gloria Odusote ’13 and Jess Brooks ’13 tried to draw into a quad with one other friend after that friend joined their six-person group. But the three soon lost their selection when they did not fill the fourth space in their desired room.
“I don’t have a room,” Odusote said. “It’s kind of problematic.”
Yuan, Odusote and Brooks said they did not fully understand that the Housing Department’s policy requires draw groups to completely fill all available spaces in a room and wished they were provided with clearer information about the process.
“It would have been great to have known that a room had to be completed in order for me to occupy it,” Yuan said. “The room draw guide just says that until a room is filled, we would be unable to sign our contracts. I did not expect that to mean that I would get kicked out of the room I chose after 10–15 minutes.”
After losing their room, Odusote and her friends called the Housing Department to make sense of their situation and were told to apply for spaces on the waitlist.
Students on the waitlist receive housing assignments during the summer, after rooms become available due to cancelations.
“While specific accommodations cannot be guaranteed, the dormitory and roommate preferences expressed by students on their wait list application are accommodated whenever possible,” DePaul explained. “The wait list is ordered by original room selection times from the sophomore college draws and from the upperclass draw.”
To avoid the uncertainty of the wait list, some students have sent out e-mails looking for roommates to fill available rooms. This is possible because “a student can go into the room selection system and draw any time after their draw time until the close of draw,” DePaul said. But Odusote and Brooks claim that they tried to draw after their time but were “locked out of the system.”
Odusote and Brooks, who are still looking for a solution to their housing problems, have suggested some improvements to the room selection system.
Brooks suggested that the Housing Department host question-and-answer sessions in the residential colleges. DePaul said that her office holds at least one information session for undergraduates every year, but the students interviewed for this article were unaware of this service.
Students also suggested improvements to the housing website. “It’s really hard to navigate,” Odusote said, adding that the format made her more stressed.
After dropping down into other groups twice, Yuan was able to find a roommate and a room.
At some point, Odusote and Brooks will get a room.
“All wait-listed applicants are guaranteed housing,” DePaul explained.
But students said that this guarantee doesn’t make the process any less stressful.
“I just wish they had told us a bit more,” Brooks said.
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