The other day as I walked to class, studied in Kohlberg, and ate in Narples, housing appeared to be the main topic on everyone’s mind. This was especially true, it seemed, on Wednesday, as rising juniors continued to create and discard plans for where to room and whether to go for a single or a double.
The truth is that some of this anxiety (from which I can’t claim to be free either) could be eased by the college. Of course, the first thing the administration could do would be to reinstate our ability to view the floorplans any time of year. Unfortunately, to do that would be to remove Swarthmore’s ability to create forced doubles and triples… how many have heard those frightening words floating through the air in the past few days? I have to wonder though, do they not expect us to download the floor plans en masse now that we’re aware they take them away on a whim? If so, the mind boggles.
That being said, the easiest way to soothe some of the stress in the moment is to not issue Green Advisors, Student Academic Mentors, and Resident Assistants housing times in the general selection round, since by then their rooms have already been determined, and adjust the window of time when people choose accordingly. I am aware, however, that I know nothing about the system that assigns students their housing times. Perhaps a quirk of the system is that every student needs to be assigned a time, regardless of whether a given student has already chosen a room or not. If that is the case, there is still a solution: release the times of students who have already selected their room. After all, there is a world of difference between having 5:40 as your housing time and knowing that 100 people have chosen before you (in which case rising juniors are left in limbo not knowing if you’ll get a single or need to plan for a double) and having that same housing time but knowing forty of those people have previously chosen, leaving you far more confident that you’ll get a single.
On the topic of doubles and singles, my parting complaint is that, while not unmanageable in its current form, it would certainly be more convenient if you didn’t have to continuously match and unmatch with your prospective roommate in order to see what singles are available — whoops, time to pull up my housing portal!
