Room lottery does not provide fair results
One day rolls around every year that gets Franklin students nervous about living arrangements for next year.
Students long for the much-wanted quads in Johnson-Dietz but most will have to settle for their second or third choices.
And though such an event only comes once a year, it can be traumatic for some.
The room lottery affects where students will live for the next year, which leads to nine months of potentially dissatisfied students.
The current system is flawed. Residence Life adopted a new system for assigning numbers to students. A computer selects the numbers, rather than having the students draw.
But this system does not work. And the previous system did not work. Under both systems, it is possible for a senior and three sophomores to get a low number – such as 11 – and four seniors could get a higher number – such as 135 – and miss out on getting the room they wanted.
But sophomores should not be given priority of housing over seniors.
We should assign points to each grade level – one for freshman, four for seniors – and add these figures together to assign priority for housing.
Four seniors would have a 16, and would get a lower number; a senior and three sophomores would get 10 points, and get later choices for housing.
From here, the lottery numbers should be assigned based on the number of credits a student has.
This would serve as a reward. The harder a student works through school and the more credits he or she earns, the higher the chance of getting desired housing.
The current role of the room lottery needs changed, in order to promote an increased level of fairness.
