Reforming the Room Selection Process at Barnard

Do I want to live on campus? How much will housing prices increase by next year? Should I live with someone? With whom should I live? Where should I live? Where do my friends want to live? Do I want a meal plan if I don’t live in a suite with a kitchen? If I am planning to study abroad, will I still get housing when I return? Many of these questions flood the minds of students as they plan to live in on-campus housing in the school year ahead.

Since dorms on campus represent students’ homes away from home during the academic year and housing selection can be one of the most chaotic times in students’ already busy schedules, the Student Government Association of Barnard collaborated with Barnard’s Office of Residential Life and Housing to discuss and move forward in satisfying students with a new plan for choosing dorms on campus. The initiative to reform the room-selection process arose in SGA last year, and ever since, there has been strong student support and steady administrative feedback on this initiative. The success of the student-administrator collaboration proves that students can indeed change policies on campus.

During the first SGA Representative Council meeting of the year, the room-selection process was set as a topic for one of SGA’s Town Hall meetings this semester. This housing Town Hall took place on Nov. 12. It dually served as an information session for the proposed room-selection process and a forum for discussion, questions, and answers among the students and the ResLife staff at the event. The Town Hall followed the passage of an SGA resolution that detailed recommended changes to the room-selection process in place from previous years at Barnard. About half a dozen SGA Representative Council members had formed an internal SGA Housing Committee to draft this resolution to present to Annie Aversa, director of Residential Life and Housing at Barnard. This internal SGA Housing Committee then worked together with SGA’s Housing Advisory Board, which is comprised of a group of students who meet weekly with Aversa to make suggestions for improving different aspects of residential life and housing at Barnard.

ResLife’s response to SGA’s resolution and to the two student groups involved with providing student feedback about residential life and housing at Barnard proved to be remarkable. ResLife pooled together research about the housing policies at many neighboring New York City colleges and universities, as well as those at the Seven Sisters, and concluded that a new system for room selection at Barnard would be feasible if the majority of the student body voiced positive reactions to it.

The drafted proposal provides Barnard students with much more personal agency than before. Each student who wants to live in Barnard housing will be given a lottery number and an appointment time to register face-to-face with a staff member from ResLife. Students have the ability to break down and re-form their groups until they are able to select their housing. A student may pull in up to five people to fill a suite in a suite-style residential hall. If a student wants to live in a single room in a hall-style residential hall, she simply chooses her room during her selection time. Rising seniors will participate in senior selection, unless they would like to live with rising juniors. In a case of mixed groups of rising seniors and rising juniors, the rising seniors will participate in open selection with the rising juniors. The notion that a mixed-class group should choose a suite based on the best number in the group is one option presented in open selection, whereas the notion that seniors should be privileged with the best housing options on campus lies in the second option. Both options were discussed at ResLife meetings, SGA meetings, the Housing Advisory Board meetings, and the Town Hall. An option has yet to be chosen (by majority and popularity) for the new housing plan, but the idea that each student will receive her own lottery number has received wide support from Barnard students of all class years.

To update the room-selection process technologically, the proposal allows students to approach a ResLife staff member in a bank-teller-style line, instead of in separate lines for each residential hall, when selecting a room. There will no longer be paper floor plans for students to cross off after they have selected their rooms. Instead, there will be instantly updated floor plans of the remaining available rooms and suites for students when they arrive for their room selection appointments.

ResLife is further providing students with ways to speak up and offer additional suggestions about the proposed changes through an online survey about the proposed room-selection process. Also, SGA has opened applications for the Housing Advisory Board to encourage student participation in discussing residential life and housing matters with Aversa.

Both SGA and Barnard’s Office of Residential Life & Housing understand that active listening and effective communication are key to proposing changes in student policies on campus. The collaborative work to install changes to the room selection process will hopefully be approved in time for room selection for 2009-2010, which will happen next semester.

The author is a Barnard College junior majoring in economics. She is Barnard SGA’s vice president of finance.