Students can either live in their current room next year or move to a new hall of their choice, as the 2006 room draw process which began March 6 and will continue through March 31.
The steps necessary for room draw are available online courtesy of Housing and Dining.
This year any room on campus can be requested online except Centennial and McDowell suites and single rooms, said Paul Lynch, assistant director of Housing and Dining. This is due to the high demand of the suites, and the limited number of singles available.
Ben Gorban, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs who squatted his current room, meaning he will keep the same room next year, said the room draw instructions were easy to understand.
"They basically laid out everything you needed to do step-to-step," he said.
The Housing and Dining Web site gives the exact dates and times that certain students can apply for every room. Priority is given by credits earned and by where students currently live.
Many agree the process is very fair.
"Most schools go by credits, so I guess it's nothing unusual; upperclassmen should have first choice," said Matt Kesicki, a sophomore in the Kogod School of Business.
Lynch said room draw is a fair process.
"We are yet to hear from students that it is not fair, so that's not to say that somebody won't come up and say it isn't; we'd love to hear from them," he said.
This was the second year that most rooms could be reserved online according to Lynch. In previous years, students went to Bender Arena for the room draw process.
"It was a waste of student time and wasn't meeting students where we could technologically," Lynch said. Going online "was a natural step to meet the students' needs and it makes the most sense," he said.
According to Lynch, since being online, more students have stayed in the residence halls than in previous years. Going online has allowed Housing and Dining to smooth out the process and "make it easier for everyone to participate, make it fair for everybody, and eliminate problems that just don't need to be there," Lynch said.
Dispelling previous rumors, Centennial will not have an all-women's floor, Lynch said.
"We would like to do away with some of them, but the reason why we have them is because of the student population makeup. If we didn't have some all-women's floors, and we tried to balance out males, we would still have floors where you had two males and all females."
Last year, less than 1,600 students reapplied for housing on-campus and around the same is expected this year.
