Housing Mix-Up: Students Agitated
By: Liz Welborn
The panic started on March 26, 2009.
Students were excited to see the e-mail titled “room reservation confirmation.” However, when they read its contents they were far from happy.
Students were shocked to find that strangers were listed as their roommates for the fall '09 school year. Some students even got placed into buildings that they did not even put on their preferred list.
“I only found one or two people that didn’t have a problem with housing,” Sally Fowler, a sophomore at High Point commented.
It was chaos.
Students piled into Student Life demanding to know why they got placed into the Village when they asked for York, and complaining about the people randomly listed as their roommates for next year.
The problem stemmed from Student Life who was using a new method for housing application this year. Student Life has a whole new online system for housing application called StarRez that is supposed to make the housing process easier for those all around. So why wasn’t it?
Troubled Students
Fowler has never had a problem with the housing until this year. She went to Student Life personally to request a single room and she told them that the building did not mat
ter.
ter. When she received the infamous e-mail she says, “I was very surprised to find that I had a roommate when I so adamantly requested a single.”
The roommate that Fowler had been placed with was someone she did not get along with at all. She went to meet with Student Life a second time only to be told that they would fix it as soon as possible.
A couple of days later, “I still had a room in Yadkin with a roommate. It was like Student Life wasn’t even listening to me.”
Fowler met with Student Life for the third time, requesting anything but the arrangements that she had 
now. “It took meeting with them three times to finally get myself heard.”
now. “It took meeting with them three times to finally get myself heard.”Fowler is not the only student to feel unheard. Rachel Lewis, a junior at HPU, squatted her room in the village for next year.
Since two of her current roommates were leaving the suite, she put two new people on her preferred list for roommates.
Lewis was shocked to find two other people as her roommates for next year. “The new system put in two other people that I did not request.”
Student Life said that they could not fix it because the people who were accidently placed there did not want t
o leave. “They did not want to leave because it is a balcony room. It was either we move out and live with the people we want to, or stay and live with strangers.”Lewis ended up having to leave her squatted room because of the other roommates who would not leave.
Students who did meet with Student Life have complained that they were met with rudeness when stating their complaints.
“I was upset, I had been promised a single when I didn’t get it, they didn’t seem to care that they had broken their promise,” Fowler said. “They could’ve at least been polite.”
Lewis has a theory as to why Student Life was rude to her. “I think they were pressured because of all the students who were dissatisfied and they were getting snappy. They made me think that I was being the rude one, when I wasn’t at all.”
Student Life Explains
Sarah Haak, Director of resident life, says that she found out that there was a housing mix up that she “notified the entire campus within 20 minutes which has never been done before in such a short amount of time.”
Although Haak does admit that there was a mix up she denies that it was the new housing software. “We had the StarRez representative fly in from their Australia headquarters to look over the software; he confirmed that what caused the mix up was likely a miscommunication between the students.”
Haak goes on to say that the computer software program is “very literal. If the students do not put all the same requests down as their friends the computer won’t understand it.”
Student Life claims that students either put too many people down as potential roommates (for example, putting four people down when it is only a two person dorm), or they didn’t communicate to their friends the order of the dorms they wanted (one put York as first and the other put Yadkin first).
Students who communicated correctly with each other did not have a problem with their housing. Emily Galloway, a junior, got the room she wanted. “I think it was because all of my roommates for next year all put the same room down.”
Lewis admits that she listed an extra friend as a potential roommate. “I listed one of my friends as a backup roommate just in case one of the other ones did not work out.”
Listing more roommates than needed might have been the reason the computer placed two random people in her apartment instead of who she wanted.
As for the accusations about Student Life being unfriendly Haak answers, “We try to cater to each student because they are who we are working for technically. I have no idea why people would think is uncaring but I feel like sometimes we care too much.”
Haak says that her staff of five resident directors and two assistants is working hard to place students where they want to be. “We are all coming in on the weekends and taking home at night. We want students to be happy.”
Improvements for Next Year
Students and staff at HPU are looking to avoid the same housing crisis from happening next year.
Fowler believes that if miscommunication was really the problem with the housing this year then, “there needs to be better clarification, it needs to specific or have student life e-mail the students about agreeing with each other on where they want to live.”
Some Students like, Lewis, believe that the not using the computer software would be the best thing for next year. “They should have stuck with the old system of just doing the e-mail thing. If they did that this year none of this would have happened.”
However, for Student Life going back to the old ways is not going to happen. Haak says that next year student life wants to advance the housing process by, “giving each student a blueprint of rooms and letting them decide that way.”
Haak also goes on to say that, “I think we will give more in depth instructions than we did this year. That is one thing I wish we had done better.”
Student life wants students to know that if they are unhappy with the room that they have been assigned to “to please come talk to us. We want to meet with you and let you nothing set in stone,” Haak explains.
Both students and faculty agree that the housing process is also a learning process. “This was the first year that we used this new software, we will be prepared for this next year and it will only get better,” Haak says.Fowler agrees stating, “The school is getting better and better with each year and hopefully the same will be true about the housing applications.”
Only time will tell.
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