Even those lucky freshmen who received a housing assignment in Tuesday?s lottery were upset. Many felt they had been treated unfairly because Towers suites originally reserved for them were given to incoming juniors. The soon-to-be sophomores booed the announcement at the lottery that no suites were reserved for their class, and one asked, ?Why are sophomores being shafted??
?We didn?t have options. Basically it was Susan B. or go home,? freshman Alex Voetsch said. He and 13 other members of his Sigma Chi pledge class managed to secure six-person clusters on the fifth floor of the Morgan wing.
?It?s disappointing to have to live there again,? he said.
There were 444 beds available for sophomores at the lottery, including rooms that were not selected at the upperclass doubles lottery Thursday, April 19. Residential Life created a number of cluster groupings to proportionally match the number of students who applied for such arrangements.
Thirty six-person clusters and 17 four-person clusters were available in Susan B. Anthony Residence Halls. The majority of the 98 stand-alone double rooms were located in SBA as well. There were also several center doubles in Towers and three doubles in Hill Court.
This resulted in the stratification of classes that Residential Life had attempted to prevent.
?We?ve ended up with class-based housing,? Director of Residential Life Logan Hazen said.
Exact numbers were not available at press time, but most incoming seniors are living in Hill Court. Incoming sophomores will live in SBA, except about 90 who chose special interest housing. Soon-to-be juniors are mostly in Towers with some in Hill Court and SBA. Seniors also compose the majority of those living in GLC ? 130 of the 230 located in the building.
Although the Freshman Housing Implementation Committee made recommendations to avoid segregating classes in certain areas, ?when faced with the reality, they quickly went back to seniority? to determine who should live in what housing, Hazen said.
?We had to make some recommendations based on what we felt the mix would be,? said George VanderZwaag, director of athletics and recreation and chair of the upperclass committee of FHIC.
The committee tried to establish a fair 60-40 proportion between Towers and SBA. Some members believe that SBA is viewed as the most undesirable space on campus and that sophomores needed another option.
After the housing lottery those proportions had to be changed because ?we felt maybe we weren?t being as fair to the [incoming] juniors,? VanderZwaag said.
Still, many current freshmen were left dissatisfied with the overall housing situation.
?Freshmen should have something to look forward to,? freshman Aditi Mukherji said.
