Wed 9 Apr 2008
How can I tell that room draw is coming up? Because searches like “how many room draw groups are there in currier” and “pick numbers in spencer cluster” are bringing undergraduates to EphBlog. Hello to our new readers! Comments:
1) I love the way students continue to use Willipedia to coordinate the process.
Help make room draw less stressing, let others know how big your group is and (if you know) where you’re looking to pick into.
Oh, and no intimidation of other groups (such as “if we don’t get into the singles in West, we’ll harass whoever lives there all year”) is allowed; if you do that, you could get kicked to the end of the room draw. Also, don’t post anything during the actual room draw or from the room draw locations, as that is also not allowed.
Also, putting your class year rather than your class title (”‘09″ rather than “sophomore”) might make things clearer since the distinction between current sophomore and rising sophomore might make things a little muddy.
Good idea, and not just because I invented it!
2) The simplest way to reduce the stress of room draw would be to spread it out over three nights. If the rising juniors had 24 hours after the rising seniors had picked, they would have time to figure out what they wanted without having to waste time looking at a bunch of rooms that were already gone. As it is, every student feels the need to gather information about all the rooms in a neighborhood even if many of them are unlikely to be available.
3) Of course, the Office of Campus Life worries that if students have too much time to plan and coordinate, they will self-segregate, even within neighborhoods. I don’t think that this is a reasonable fear.
4) Oh wait! Neighborhood housing was supposed to get rid of the “stress” of room draw! Professor Will Dudley ‘89 and CUL promised us that years ago: “Third and finally, the all-campus room draw is highly stressful (even painful) for many students . . .” Alas, another failure for Neighborhood housing. (Don’t know about this history? Check out our round-up.)
April 9th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Bring back…!
April 10th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Down with Campus Life professionals!
April 10th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Actually I worked Room Draw in 2005 (before Neighborhoods) and in 2007 (after Neighborhoods), and the neighborhood roomdraw (at least in my neighborhood) seemed significantly less stressful than the all campus roomdraw. The only piece of hard evidence I have to back that up is that nobody cried or yelled at my neighborhood roomdraw (whereas I can remember a number of students crying or yelling at the all-campus roomdraw).
April 10th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I certainly believe that story. But the reason that all campus room draw was more stressful (to the extent that it was) was not because free agency was a worse system than neighborhoods in terms of the choosing process but because the Housing Office never really tried to make it less stressful (and the Deans Office made changes that made it more stressful).
First, (and corrections on this are welcome), free agency room draw was much less stressful before 2002 or so because WSO posted who picked where as the room draw happened. So, groups that were ten away from picking could easily see who lived where and what was left. This made it relatively easy to figure out what they wanted before their turn came. Then, when Dean Roseman prevented WSO from posting that info (as part of the initial push to stop student self-segregation), it became much more stressful because students would walk into the choosing area “blind” with only a few minutes to think/talk about things.
Second, even under the blind post-2002 system, things would have been much less stressful if the draw had been broken up over more nights. The stress comes when students have little time and many options. If only 1/3 of the students in a class choose each night, then future rounds would have time to consider their options at their leisure. But, again, I don’t think that this sort of change was ever considered precisely because the College wanted to make the pick-process as blind as possible.
So, third, the key reason that this roomdraw is less stressful (and I am ready to believe that it is) is because the students choosing have way fewer choices to worry about. Once you get to the head of the line in Wood Neighborhood or wherever, the “best” choice is much more obvious than when you had the whole campus to consider.
April 10th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
It was during my time at williams that they disallowed WSO from helping. While it required more planning on our parts beforehand to prepare for potential contingencies before knowing them, I don’t know that the stress level changed too much. Word of mouth became as useful to students as WSO had been…you had a pretty good sense of which buildings had what students before entering “the room”.
That said, my recollections are hazy and we really didn’t care too much where we lived because we got bad picks (but not terrible picks) both years. However, I do not remember seeing anyone cry either year, so perhaps I’m not a good judge.
My criticism (well, really my mom’s. she was very adamant about this when I was there. every year we had a phone call that spent one hour on room draw) is that while a blind lottery was “fair” it also screwed people–my group had low picks sophomore and junior year and just barely made the co-op draw. Randomness creates winners and losers…I’d rather something of a auction system over the four years to allow students who get crappy rooms for a year or two to have an advantage later for putting up with undesirable rooms earlier. Kane, you’re a big free marketer–maybe we can create an equitable system on ephblog!
April 10th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I am here to help!
The key issue is that we don’t want a system based on randomness anymore than we want one based on free markets. (It would be horrible if rich students could buy better rooms, either directly from the College or indirectly from other students.)
Instead, we want a system that rewards and encourages desirable behavior. Now, I haven’t come up with anything for replacing the whole system along these lines, but lets start with the seniors. We want seniors to be able to live with their friends and we want to empower the most “community-minded” seniors — those who have worked hardest at throwing parties and show the most promise of doing so in the future — to live in the best party houses.
So, we needs a Senior Housing Selection Committee (SHSC) as a direct analog to the Junior Adviser Selection Committee. This would be students run. Groups of rising seniors (from any neighborhood) would get together and apply for a specific house or two. Everything from small places like Milham to bigger houses like Perry. The SHSC would evaluate applicants on how much they have contributed to community life in their current houses. This would be everything from throwing parties to, uh, cleaning up after parties to, uh, planning parties. The groups that (most credibly) promised to continue doing so would get the best party houses. They would, I bet, continue to throw great parties, making the rest of the campus much better off.
I realize that this just solves things for most seniors. It is just a start. But, in conjunction with my master plan, it gets some of the randomness out of the system. And since most juniors in Greylock will be largely indifferent and we won’t change freshmen entries, the last place that unwanted randomness will matter is sophomores in the Berkshire Quad.
April 10th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Free markets don’t have to depend on US currency. I think Rory was hinting at a system where everyone would get a certain number of “points” that could be used to bid on various pieces of housing, so if you were thrifty one year and accepted less desirable housing, the next year you would have a surplus of points and the ability to get into anywhere you want. I’m not really sure how such a system could be realistically implemented, given complications ranging from study abroad and JAing to the fact that pick groups change from year to year, but at least in theory, it would be one route to giving everyone an equal shot at housing.
April 11th, 2008 at 6:20 am
The whole housing selection system is far too complicated and must drain away far, far too much energy and create far too much angst. How is it done in other residential colleges?