By The Beacon Editorial Board
Like clockwork each spring, campus housing selection brings with it the drama of deadlines, point calculations and stress. But this year, rather than flocking to their respective hall basements to receive their fate for next year, students came to the Chiles Center as part of Residence Life's new one-day housing selection extravaganza.
Residence Life promises that the change brings efficiency and organization to the process. With any system, there will always be a certain amount of tears, frustrations and disappointments. But all in all, Residence Life's new one-day system continues to do many things right.
One of the main advantages of the old system that remains unchanged is that students who return to the dorms earn additional points for coming back to the same dorm after their freshman year. The incentive from these additional points builds a base for returning students to the dorm, ideally forming stable communities within each residence hall.
This system is still in place, and we're glad to see it stay. When something works well, it's best to just leave it be.
With that said, this system has its own issues. As seen in Schoenfeldt, a handful of rising sophomore residents were unable to move into vacant suites normally reserved for upperclassmen. Instead, juniors and seniors from other dorms were able to cut ahead in order to fill these rooms.
Clearly, the goal was to get more juniors and seniors to stay on campus. At the same time though, the point system is also designed to give students who already live in a dorm an advantage over incoming outsiders.
These competing desires create a conflict, and by agitating some freshmen and sophomores in the process, Residence Life runs the risk of alienating the dorm's longer-term community and undermining the camaraderie normally established by returning students.
In effect, Residence Life might end up shooting itself in the foot by rewarding seniority over inter-dorm ties. All the same, this might become a non-issue as the dorm fills out over time.
Moving forward, it's important to decide if points will continue to be based on credits or year. Currently, the former takes precedence, and we are happy to see that this is the case. Unfortunately, this rule doesn't hold true for transfer students.
For these students, the current system unfairly docks their incoming credits but cutting their total in half. When it comes to college experience, credits are credits, regardless of where you get them. Handicapping transfer students for not having the "UP experience" only works to give them a raw deal and provides little impetus for them to invest in the dorm community.
To alleviate the point disparity, transfer students should either be given equal standing in points or at least assigned a handicap block of points to compensate.
Like course registration, room selection will always leave some people with the short straw. With the new process, students at least have the luxury of going through the process at the same time and on the same day.
The commitment by Residence Life to fine-tune and adjust the system where necessary is an encouraging sign that they take the process seriously. We hope they continue to improve the system.
