More Freshmen Move In Adjustment Lottery
By Marie Y. Thibault
STAFF REPORTER
About 16 percent of the Class of 2009 requested to move out of their temporary dormitory assignments in this year’s housing adjustment lottery. A total of 157 of 996 students, applied for a change, with 134, or 85 percent of those entering the adjustment lottery, able to move.
These percentages are higher than last year’s, which were a recent low; 12 percent of the Class of 2008 requested housing changes; 83 percent of those were allowed to move.
East Campus was the most popular first choice preference, with 38 students requesting it first, followed by Baker House and Burton-Conner. However, East Campus had the third-highest percentage of students requesting housing changes. Senior House had the highest percentage of freshmen, 40 percent, requesting a move, followed by New House with 39 percent, and Bexley Hall with 34 percent.
Both McCormick Hall and Next House have residence-based advising, so freshmen living there were not allowed to request a move.
Lottery results became available at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 31.
Lottery accounts for gender
The housing adjustment lottery, which was open from Aug. 25 to Aug. 30, allowed students to either choose the building they had been assigned to during the Freshman Summer Lottery, or choose at most four other dormitories they liked.
“The algorithm was processed by gender in order to ensure that no building ended up with more of one gender than it could accommodate,” said Robin Smedick, assistant director of undergraduate, summer, and guest housing. “In order to increase the number of students who are moved, tweaking then occurs to gender requirements if a building can accommodate more males or females,” she said.
In the summer lottery, 70 percent of freshmen received their first choice, 26 percent received their second choice, and the remaining four percent were assigned to their third choice.
Exploring with dorm events
During the last week, upperclassmen in each dormitory held events to help freshmen learn more about their dormitories.
New House Rush Chair Joey Y. Zhou ’07 said that New House sponsored smoothies, ultimate frisbee, barbecue, volleyball, and sushi-making events. He was surprised that New House was listed as the dormitory out of which the highest number and third highest percentage of students wished to move, and said that the freshmen may have moved in order to be closer to campus.
East Campus Rush Chair Christopher M. Vogt ’06 said that East Campus had a “very high-energy rush, with a lot of people being very visible.” EC held a spaghetti wrestling event as well as building a water slide and a giant swing. Referring to the high number of freshmen who requested to move into or out of EC, Vogt said that it “does nothing but improve the culture of the dorm … the flux both ways is good.”
After the lottery results were in, students spent Wednesday night exploring their new dorms and finding out more about each floor and room.
Yesterday was move-in day for those freshmen who were assigned new rooms or dormitories.
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