Well, it was just everyone’s favorite time of year, housing selection. The time of year that is almost guaranteed to cause a huge amount of stress and disgruntlement among the students of MoCo.

I am sure that all of us saw the email that was recently sent out telling us all about the new doubles and triples in Jo Smith, the overflow, and the Hillsides. While Moravian may be offering money back to any student who selects these options, there are plenty who are disgruntled with this change of events.

Many students around campus are wondering why we have to make these accommodations. There are also plenty saying that it is unfair to make this change so close to the actual housing selection, when people have already formed their groups and made their plans. Many had already planned to try for specific rooms and now may have to scramble for a roommate, or even a second roommate, in order to get the room they want.

This produces extra stress and further complicates an already crazy selection process. One of the reasons that people are so disgruntled is because they believe that we are accepting too many students, with not enough housing. Several are of the opinion that we either need to accept fewer students or build more housing. Of course, this only represents one of the reasons that students are disgruntled.

There is always the problem that many people just want to have the same room that they already have. We ask, why do we have to go through this whole long process, where even the smallest of variables can have a huge outcome on the availability of specific room types in specific dorms?

It may be that a person goes to a dorm, in a room that they really like, and have a great time there for one year because they got lucky on their housing lottery, say around number 120. However, the next year you are planning to have the same room in the same dorm, but you get a very low housing lottery number, say around number 270.

This small change that is COMPLETELY RANDOM could cause a student to have to change to a different floor or even dormitory. The fact that something that has such a huge impact on our college experience is based on something that is out of anyone’s control is insane. Many of us would prefer to remove the lottery system all together and allow students who like their rooms to keep them from year to year. Many other colleges already allow their students to do this, and it seems that none of my fellow students can think of any reason why Moravian should not follow suit.

So far as I can see there is only one place where it makes sense: the freshmen dorms. If we continue with having dorms specifically for freshmen than those students cannot stay there from year to year. Once again there are plenty of people who believe that we should not have dorms specifically for freshmen, but that is a topic for another discussion.

However, the point remains that it seems that something needs to change. What is your opinion? Do you like the way housing is handled right now? What would you change about it? These are all important questions, and hopefully sometime in the future we can have answers that satisfy all the students.