Last Tuesday marked the beginning of the three-day freshman housing selection process. Freshmen, mostly as groups of two, three or four, completed housing forms about two weeks ago. Individual forms were also available for those entering the lottery system alone and without a group. The form asked for building preferences and information about each member of the group. Last Saturday, April 2nd, each freshman group was then given an assigned number, signifying where it stood in line to pick rooms for next year.
“A total of 386 numbers were given out,” Tracey Angel, the housing coordinator and head of the freshman room selection process, said. “It was completely random, all done by a computer.”
Students naturally reacted differently to their numbers, but most agreed that the system that the University had set up for housing was fair.
“I guess it’s as fair as they can make it,” freshman Catherine Bernstein said. “They couldn’t really do it any other way without making people upset, even though sometimes it doesn’t work out for people.”
“I guess there’s no better way to do it, but I liked it because I benefited,” freshman Adhiraj Goel said. Goel had received a lottery number of 49.
When freshman received their lottery numbers, most initially wondered how many people would be able to live in the more popular apartment buildings, such as Bradford and Homewood, or the equally well-liked Charles Commons.
Angel did not know how many people would get the housing they preferred.
“I don’t know because all I have is history to go by,” Angel said. “It’s really interesting because students are choosing differently than they have in the past. They’re choosing Charles Commons before the apartment spaces, and usually the apartment spaces are gone by the first night. However, we still had some left over for the second day this time.”
The housing office has provided several information sessions for people to learn how to navigate the housing process, should it be confusing. However, not a lot of freshmen attended these meetings.
“Students don’t seem to be quite as prepared this year as they have been in the last few years,” Angel said. “But we’ve had more information sessions and more making-your-number-work-for-you sessions than in the past.”
Some students did not take advantage of these information sessions because they were at awkward times and were unnecessarily numerous.
“They told us everything that we needed to know, but I guess it was a little confusing because there were a lot of separate processes,” freshman Lily Thompson said. “They could have condensed all of the meetings into one meeting, but instead they had a lot of different ones that told you different things. Also, the meetings were at weird times. They were always at like three or four [in the afternoon], when people had classes.”
However, most freshmen thought the housing process was straightforward, or as straightforward as it could be. James Fanto, another freshman, was unable to make room selection at the time that was assigned to the group. “I had class, so I gave a proxy form instead,” he said. “It was all very straightforward.”
“I think they [JHU Housing] did an excellent job. Between the optional meetings and the chocolate they handed out, the information was definitely accessible,” freshman Margaret Keener said. “I went to an info meeting and a ‘how-to-make-your-number-work-for-you’ session. Both were helpful. They had floor plans available so you could look at the rooms, and gave you realistic margins of what might be available. There were just a lot of different ways to prioritize and make you prepared for your specific day.”
Some people have wondered whether the abnormally large size of the current sophomore class, as they move out of University housing, would mean that this year’s freshmen would have more housing options.
Angel said that it’s not clear yet. “It depends on how next year’s class comes in. At this point we’ve had about 260 spaces for upper-classmen students for next year,” Angel said. “The freshman class projected number is up by 10 and the transfer number is up (as a projection). It’s hard to predict so we’re going to have to see how this all falls out. We don’t really have a sense of that until next fall when we know what the incoming freshman for [the] following class looks like.”
