By Taylor King

The housing selection process for the 2019-2020 school year took place in the SSC March 21 at 6 p.m.

To some students, this is an exciting time for students to have a change of scenery for the next school year. For others, it can be the most stressful time of the year.

“Honestly, this is the worst night of the year, it is so stressful because you work so hard to live in a nice place when you are going to be an upper classmen and with the lottery that might not work out. I was apart of the last people to get the last three-man suite in SLC,” Emma Lynch said.

The housing lottery is fairly new to the housing process for QU, it has only been done once before. Residence Life believes it is the best way for students to see the layout of the buildings.

“We started doing the housing lottery process in person last spring (2018) and we found that students really appreciated seeing the building layouts and the floor plans in person.  They are able to sign up for rooms adjacent to their friends and they become part of the process of creating their community.  Our previous housing lottery selection, in the spring of 2017, was run through an online software system that we no longer utilize.  That system ranked students similarly (by earned credits), but it also looked to GPA and semesters lived on campus as secondary attributes,” Andrea Gruger said.

Students last spring expressed how frustrated they were after knowing how the housing lottery went they were not thrilled for it again.

“The atmosphere and being down in the SSC crammed with everyone down there is just chaos. I think they should either find a bigger space to do this at or have this split up in two groups, there are just too many of us,” Ally Gordon said.

Having two groups could be difficult because there would be loss of time and they would not be sure when the first group would end. But, residence life representatives are open to looking for a bigger space for next year.

As far as this being the “best” way for housing selection there would be multiple different answers.

“I think they should go back to how they use to do it, from what I heard it worked and it was fair all across the board and people weren’t as stressed,” Lynch explains.

On the other hand, residence life says this is fair and the best housing process.

“This is a hard question when you consider that everyone has different reasons for choosing where they want to live.  I think, if you ask all students what housing option is the “best” you would hear multiple different answers.  This system is the best way to ensure students who are going into their final year at QU have the first preference at picking their housing assignment.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that every senior gets to live in a campus house,” Gruger says.

Here was the breakdown of when the houses and apartments were filled:

11th draw (#41) – the last campus house was selected.

27th draw (#64) – the last single apartment was selected.

40th draw (#113) – the last Woods apartment was selected.

65th draw (#206) – the last SLC apartment was selected.