Sophomore housing hell

February 26, 2009: panic. At 1 a.m., I receive calls from my friends. The calls should have centered on midterms, but dealt instead with the only thing that is more frightening about the Columbia undergraduate experience: housing. Registration just opened. General selection? Suite selection? Lottery number? As a rising sophomore, I kept hearing these terms, and the only thing that I needed but failed to do was understand them. Continuous clicks on the housing Web site and repeated talks with my friend about whether we could find people willing to try for a suite (Claremont? Or Ruggles? Is Furnald completely out of the question?) made me exceedingly frantic. But what was surprising was that even though people rushed around trying to make housing plans, no one could explain to me how the process worked.

Somehow, I was accepted into Columbia, so I reasoned that, somehow, I should be able to navigate through the Housing Services Web site and find answers. But it soon became apparent that the best admissions test Columbia could administer would be to ask applicants to explain how housing works simply from the information available online. Consequently, I will briefly explain the process (according to the upperclassmen whom I’ve desperately interrogated). Indeed, this will be more useful, if less liberating, than my whining.

So here it goes: rising sophomores get 10 points, juniors 20, and seniors 30. Basic. If you don’t opt for LLC, brownstones, or special interest housing, you can choose to do general or suite selection. If you choose suite selection, you are given a “priority point value” based on the average points of all group members. Translation: you get more points if you are in a group of sophomores and juniors than one of just sophomores. To enter suite selection, you select a group leader who will invite you. Once you’ve accepted, you have 6 hours to withdraw, and if you don’t, you must fill out the “Registration Summary,” after which your registration is complete. Congratulations. Now you stress out for a couple of weeks until lottery numbers are announced on March 24. Assigned completely at random, and therefore the source of incredible stress, a good lottery number can make or break your hopes of living Ruggles, relegate you to spending a year with an anonymous roommate in McBain, or if you’re lucky, have you climbing up and down the stairs in Wien just to find a bathroom. Under the section titled “Helpful Hints for Rising Sophomores,” the voice of wisdom at Housing Services advises sophomores, who are the most disadvantaged, to register as a group, and, in the miraculous event that they are assigned a good lottery number, to drop down to general selection, keep the great lottery number, and have a better chance of picking singles. At the very least, you will be living with a friend, whereas if you enter general selection from the onset and get a terrible number, you might end up rooming in a dodgy hall with a person you’ve never met.

So now that we’re a little clearer on how the process works, we can look at it critically and conclude that it sucks to be a sophomore. Evidence: my unpleasant surprise upon learning that I would be lucky to live exactly where I live now (the smallest single in Hartley. But hey, look at the bright side: it is a single, and I do have access to a kitchen and a bathroom on the same floor). Conclusion #2: random lottery numbers, while the fairest way to organize room selection, are unnecessarily stressful. Seeing as it is sophomores who are getting screwed over the most, it would be reasonable for the University to set aside a number of decent singles for second-years to be awarded on the basis of academic merit after lottery numbers have been assigned. That way, hard-working students with dismal luck still have some hope that not all is lost. Conclusion #3: since “priority is based on the year you entered Columbia,” the University would actually be living up to its policy if it gave better housing to sophomores rather than to first-years. While it is understandable to want to ease the transition into college by providing freshmen with comfortable housing, if the policy is to give priority to the students that have been here the longest, then first-years should have to wait for their turn at singles. The administration should at least consider our point-of-view, as hellish housing is much more bearable if you know it might one day improve. But as things stand, I will be incredibly sad to leave my no longer tiny and cramped, but cozy and beautiful, Hartley single in exchange for god-knows-what, god-knows-where.