To the Editor:
In the Office of Residential Life's Housing Assignments and Room Draw 2001-2002 Information book mailed to rising sophomores, juniors, and seniors last term, the administration lists several "guiding principles" for the room draw process. One of these is labeled "Coeducation: Coeducational living environments promote a better understanding of gender issues in a collegiate atmosphere." This pamphlet also states, that "the Room Draw encourages those who wish to live together to do so." Yet, by eliminating blocking, ORL is making these two goals much more difficult for a large number of students.
Students are able to live with members of the same sex as roommates, but what about members of the opposite sex? If dorms fill up too quickly or your priority number is too low, it is very possible that, without blocking, you will not be able to live near your friends of the opposite sex. Even if you are able to find rooms in the same dorm, then you still will likely be forced to choose between living close to your friends or living in a better room. Basically, by disabling blocking, the school is making it harder for students to maintain close relationships with members of the opposite sex. This obviously goes against their stated goal of coeducation. The lack of blocking also discourages students from living together by forcing them to choose between a better room and living near their friends. For a school allegedly based on the principle of a close-knit residential community, the end of blocking seems to work against this concept.
Supposedly, ORL hopes to fill this "friends living close to each other" void with the squatting option. This is ridiculous. It is only available in certain dorms and still will not help rising sophomores who already have the worst housing numbers. Basically, this end to blocking and beginning of "squatter's rights" is promoting a cluster based residential system where friends from separate clusters will be forced to live apart from each other for their entire college career!
Obviously last year's blocking got out of hand. Allowing people to block with seven other people was ridiculous, but this problem should not mean blocking be eliminated. I propose that blocking be allowed, but limited. Blocking should be restricted to the option of either a smaller number of students, like four or five, or to a set number of rooms, like three rooms in the whole block. This would allow students to live near the people they want to without turning the system into a joke or resulting in half the rooms on campus being gone after the seniors pick their rooms. On a similar note, I believe that ORL's decision to implement this new policy without any apparent student input again shows this school's administrations failure to consider student opinion, but that is an entirely separate (and much larger) issue!
