Even if you didn’t participate in a “Room Change Day” throughout your first year, that day comes for everyone on the first day of Fall Quarter 2013. Having to go through room selection for second-year dorms is an exciting yet stressful process. The procedure, I suppose, was relatively simple, and DU attempted to prepare students properly, but inevitably the majority of us endured the entire process with questions and concerns ravaging our thoughts. DU needs to implement some basic tools to enable students to confront this task with confidence.
The accomplishment or disappointment of this selection is the foundation for our expectations of the coming year. This activity is when second year becomes tangible. The anticipation for next year resembles that of first coming to college.
DU: For some it meant moving to a new place, meeting new people, learning new things and adjusting to a new normal. But most significantly for everyone it meant sleeping in a new bed and sharing your new room with a new unknown person. You most likely received randomly selected rooms and roommates; you had next to no participation in the process, nor control over the results. Over the summer before school, when you awkwardly Facebook creeped on your classmates and prayed for a sane roommate, inevitably you could only hope for the best.
Sometimes it worked out great. For example, my roommate and I leave each other cute notes and have pillow talks; we simply love each other to death. But other times not so much; I’ve heard horror stories of students not being allowed back in their rooms, yelled at for spilling some popcorn or rudely ignored on a daily basis.
Going into second year, recognizing the possibilities for both success and failure, it was intimidating having so much influence over the next whole year of our dorm life. The administration didn’t help by leaving an immense amount of questions unanswered.
Though I acknowledge the attempt of educating students about the process through an information session, the reality is that for whatever reason many students, myself included, did not attend. The yellow packets and emails provided general information but also contained few answers to our most pressing inquiries. The majority of students have never stepped foot into the second-year residence halls and therefore are utterly ignorant of what awaits them.
Approaching the housing table on the day of room choice it appeared organized, but instantly became one of confusion and urgency when the room you and your future roommates had chosen was no longer available. The preliminary education should have prepared us for this possibility. Especially for those students given LLC priority, as the constraints and other details surrounding this option were not provided to them.
It was helpful, however, when you and your teammates were scrambling to figure out where else you might want to live, to be told by the housing people to “hurry up, we have to keep the process moving.” Room selection would be acceptably organized if students were appropriately prepared, but this is not the case.
My primary solution is for DU to create an electronic floor plan in addition to the ones available at the front desks. This map would be accessible through their website and provide virtual tours or pictures of each room when clicked on. This would allow floor plans to be more easily accessed and would enable students to recognize the tangibility of the rooms.
Some secondary solutions could be providing actual tours of the second-year dorms, being more explicit about how Room Selection Day will work and making students aware that they should have several back-up options. If DU were to offer these solutions, I expect students would find the process somewhat more manageable. Of course, as with any considerably significant life decision, there will always be those who find it challenging.
To the current first years and those that went before us, I salute your feat of overcoming this process; to the class of 2017 and those to follow, I wish you luck.
