Students React to Housing Lottery Results

Columbia gave Michael Kim an enviable 19th birthday present on Monday: the opportunity to spend a year on Furnald Hall's 10th floor.

By the time students learned their lottery numbers at about 11:15 p.m., it was less than an hour before the end of Kim's birthday. But when the Columbia College first-year logged onto the housing Web site, he got the biggest surprise of the day: lottery number five, the best draw overall.

After being wait-listed for the Living and Learning Center when the rest of his group was admitted, Kim made a major gamble by going in for general selection alone. Even an average number likely would have condemned him to a blind double, but number five will give him his pick of some of the most desirable singles on campus. The cut-off for Furnald singles will be around 500.

"I thought that getting that number on my birthday was way too crazy to be a coincidence," Kim said.

While Kim rejoiced, some of his classmates tried to come to terms with their one-way tickets to the McBain shaft. Dustin Patenaude and Sam Daly, both CC '09, drew 2,999, the single worst number in the lottery.

"We're thinking a tent on South Lawn would be nice," said Patenaude, who added that he and Daly plan to apply for a summer transfer. "I was hoping I was hallucinating, but that wasn't it. So we had a good cry and went to JJ's, and now everything is okay."

But even with the last lottery number, Patenaude and Daly may not have been the evening's biggest losers; that honor was likely reserved for people like Ana Ortiz, CC '07. The rising senior went in for an East Campus exclusion suite with two rising juniors and two rising sophomores, but the large number of 30-point exclusion groups means that her 1,477 won't be enough to get a suite. A 23.33-point group will need a lottery number of approximately 467 to be able to pick into East Campus.

After being accepted to the LLC for her sophomore year and serving as an RA this year, Monday was Ortiz's first experience with the general housing lottery. The incoming president of the Culinary Society turned down her RA assignment in Broadway because the building doesn't have refrigerators, and now she'll likely end up in a River single.

"I was told by the housing people that every [EC exclusion] group with one senior got a suite last year, which is why we chose that setup," she said. "I was pretty upset when I saw that number."

For seniors in Ortiz's situation, the most frustrating part is that, unlike most seniors with terrible lottery numbers, they won't be allowed to regroup. Senior regroup is limited to students who entered the lottery in 30-point groups, so Ortiz and others will have no chance of landing in a suite.

"The lottery is supposed to reward seniors. By not letting these seniors regroup, we're totally screwed," she said.

Seniors who went into the lottery in five-person, 30-point groups won't be regrouping either, but that's because they won't have to. Eleven senior groups of five entered the lottery to fill any of the 17 five-person suites in Hogan and EC. That was good news for people like Noor Zaidi, CC '07, whose 2,600 lottery number won't keep her out of one of the most sought-after suites on campus.

"I don't think we were consciously playing the housing numbers," Zaidi said. "We thought we were probably a long-shot to get Hogan. Nobody seems to have a lot of sympathy for my bad number."