This year's on-campus housing selection process has wrapped up, and a familiar question is resurfacing. Is the housing process fair? And if not, what can be done to fix it? From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Paul O'Connor.
This is Digital Diaries, a weekly podcast following the college experience and asking students questions about life at Northwestern. For many Northwestern students, April 13th was a day of feverishly checking their inboxes. They were looking, of course, for an email from residential services. This would inform each student of their priority number, the order in which they could log on to the housing portal and select housing for the next year.
Here's S.B. Freshman, Adrian Ayalapiraz, who currently lives in the Willard Residential College with his roommate. For the second year, we decided to stay in Willard because of we like the amenities, we like having friends and the gym here, and just like the rooms are just really nice. For me, the bus stop is very convenient.
It's important to note that Willard is a residential college. These dorms tend to be smaller, often have themes and require students to write an application to live in them. Other residential colleges include Chapin Hall, the Humanities Residential College, Hobart House, the Women's Residential College, and East Fairchild, the Communications Residential College. Ayalapiraz says that Willard's amenities are what gave the residential college its appeal.
So we ended up going through the point system and we actually got the second to last priority group within Willard itself, but even with that, we got our first choice room. So in our whole housing process as a first year and second year student, we got our first choice in every single capacity. I like having a gym, like we're gonna have a walk-in closet next year, huge windowsill, like nice bathrooms. However, residential college life doesn't come without its own set of issues.
For instance, those who want to return to a residential college such as Willard must attend its events to earn points. The more points students acquire, the higher of the priority number will get for selecting a room in Willard the following year. Working in a full schedule, full like course schedule, plus eight to ten hours working, it was really hard to go to the events because most of my classes were North Campus and both of our jobs were North Campus. I feel like the system benefited a lot of people that were one humanity majors because they always congregated in South Campus and people that don't have very demanding extracurriculars.
And the events themselves aren't always flexible. Y'all can have the points or you can all get to stay here the whole time to get the points. But students outside of the residential college system can have drastically different housing experiences. Weinberg freshman Mary Daniellian lived in Jones Hall this year, the most southern dorm on campus.
It's like far away from Blum from my classes, the doubles are relatively small. Our common rooms are, most of them are not super nice and the showers are crusty and the rooms get super dusty as well. For Ayala Perez, the desire to get into a residential college led him to search the internet for the best strategies. On Reddit, they did say if you came in with a roommate that you mutually wanted in a residential college, it's just easier for the residential colleges to get you as a package deal rather than do like random assignment.
But that's like the equivalent of sighting like a TikTok. It could be completely wrong. However, many students aren't even aware of the housing system strategies until it's too late. When I was applying for housing my first year, I couldn't find much, but I didn't know that you could like gather points and those would help you get into a residential college later.
Five known that I would have applied for a residential college probably. Unfortunately for Daniellian, the general selection process left her with few options. Her priority number was on the 1600s, forcing her to room in Jones Hall for a second year in a row. I'm not pleased with it and I feel like I already made a compromise living in Jones my first year.
I don't think it's fair for someone to get a very nice dorm two times in a row and someone else get more of the worst dorms two times in a row. How can the living situations of undergraduates from the same class paying roughly the same price turn out so drastically different. It's outcomes like the one Daniellian experienced that make people question how the housing system works. I think priority numbers should not be random.
Maybe dorms can be like ranked into tiers and if you're in a lower tier house that is maybe not super nice, then you will have a chance in your second year to be in a higher tier dorm and vice versa just so you get a more of a diversity. But it's a debate that seems to die as quickly as it flares up. I don't think there's going to be a system that makes everyone happy because the demand exceeds the supply. Whether it's abolishing residential colleges or getting rid of the two-year on-campus living requirement, students like Ayala Perez and Daniellian are always proposing solutions for a problem that never seems to go away.
But whether it's a residential college like Willard or a residential hall like Jones, a sense of community can really grow anywhere. I really like my roommate and I love the friends that I made in Jones. The dorm itself, I don't mind the keys that much. From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Paul O'Connor.
Thanks for listening to another episode of Digital Diaries. This episode was reported and produced by me. The audio editor of the Daily Northwestern is Mika Ellison, the digital managing editors are Ava Mendoli and Erica Schnant, and the editor-in-chief is Alex Perry. Make sure to subscribe to the Daily Northwestern's podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or SoundCloud to hear more episodes like this.