Two freshman females, who had planned to live together next year, are scrambling to avoid the dreaded housing waitlist after receiving priority numbers within the last 50 assigned.
One option they are considering is to pay a student with a better number to get them a room and drop out before the start of next year.
"We are thinking about doing something with a person who is not planning on using their number and paying the fee," one girl said. "We are pretty concerned about finding a place to live in general."
The shortage of desirable housing on campus has generated a black market for priority numbers since room draw was reinstated in 2000. One common attempt to manipulate the system involves rooming with a person with a better priority number, either within the same class or in a different class, only to have the person with the better number cancel his or her rooming assignment.
Other groups of friends split up their good numbers to maximize how many rooms they can get at room draw. Even though a pair with good housing numbers may wish to live together, they split up and each choose rooms with friends of lower housing priority. In the fall, the pairs switch back to live together.
Both methods have safeguards built against them, Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman said.
According to Director of Housing Rachel Class-Giguere, students who wish to change rooms in the fall must receive permission for the change at room draw. This policy is aimed at preventing students from pairing with students with better numbers, intending to switch housing once desirable rooms were obtained. If students are suspected of cheating the system, they will be forced to stay in their assigned rooms for Fall term, though they can request a room change in the winter.
"Because of how emotional Fall term housing can be, we want to avoid manipulation of the system at the expense of others," Class-Giguere said.
Despite the problems that these housing schemes cause for other students, those with poor numbers are desperately trying to improve their housing situations.
One freshman male and two of his friends are attempting to procure a triple next year. But the group's highest priority number falls in the 3600s, just within the upper half of rising sophomores. Still, they plan on working the system to obtain a more desirable room.
"Basically, we're trying to get two juniors who want to live together to get a triple and a double and say that one of us will live with one of them in the double and the other two in the triple with one of them," he said. "But then they would actually live in the double together and we would live in the triple. I know some people who have done it in the past."
Class-Giguere said room-draw transgressors like these freshmen are caught when red flags are raised in cases when upper- and underclassmen choose to live together or when undergraduate advisors find students living in the wrong rooms during occupancy checks, which are intended to uncover students who have switched rooms without consulting ORL.
Despite all its checks, ORL is often unable to catch students of the same class who use one student's better number only to have that student cancel his housing assignment so someone else can be pulled into the room.
Redman does not think the problem will be solved by ORL's disciplinary policy but rather through the disapproval and anger of other students.
"It's really not cheating the system, it's cheating other students," Redman said. "It's one of those true issues only students can stop."
Prior to spring 2000, room assignments were made through a paper application process, Redman said. Students submitted their room requests in early May, and based on priority numbers, ORL assigned housing and informed students of their housing assignments at the end of Spring term.
Redman said that this process generated problems because every student requested the coveted Massachusetts Row housing, and ORL immediately disappointed the majority of students who did not get this housing. In order to provide students with more choice in the process and prevent complaints of closed-door decision-making, ORL moved to the present system.
Students will vie for the approximately 3,000 beds available in College residence halls next term during room draw, which will be held from May 9 through 11. Approximately 180 students each year, mostly rising sophomores with poor numbers, end up on the waitlist.
