As we near the end of the school year, an added source of stress looms ahead: the general housing process. Everyone wants their own kitchen and common room, but how many spaces with these accommodations does Hamilton have? How likely are you to get the suite with your five best friends as rising juniors? What do you do when you can not find someone to fill the double in your suite? Unfortunately, I do not have the answers to these questions. Like many of you, I am also struggling to secure housing for next year.

In the 2020–2021 academic year, Hamilton decided to introduce certain housing alterations due to COVID-19. Yet even before these changes, Hamilton’s housing process was full of loopholes and inequities. Last summer, there was a complete revamp of the process, moving from an in-person, all-day Sunday ordeal to an online selection process. This change aimed to make the process more accessible, less time-consuming, and minimize the rigging of the housing process. In past years, some students would essentially have two rooms on campus or get good housing and then pass it off to a sophomore, knowing that they were not going to live there.

I agree that our old system was simply antiquated; most peer colleges use an online system too. But the second issue is still quite present and problematic. College administrators have been incredibly accommodating in terms of allowing students to move this year. They are aware that we are spending an incredible amount of time in our rooms with the same roommates, which can take a huge mental toll. It seems like every day I hear of people moving into dingles (doubles that only one person lives in) and people living in quads with just one roommate. However, while some students are living alone in huge quads, there are also sophomores packed like sardines in modular housing.

In addition to the living space discrepancies, I often hear complaints about roommate situations in which three people want to kick out their fourth roommate, but that is not possible without that one person’s consent. In turn, either the three people are forced to be the ones who move, or they are forced to live in a difficult situation. At the same time, some people moved out of their quads into a single or a double, but still live in their quads and just use the other room to be alone with the people they are dating. The reality of distorted claims for room changes is not to undermine those students that do need to move dorm rooms. With students choosing to go remote in the middle of the semester or dealing with mental health crises during a pandemic, there is going to be moving around and room vacancies. I hope that these room changes are screened better next year so that people who live in singles without their friends or could only get housing down the Hill have a more equal chance at living with the people they want in the location they desire in the first place.

These challenges bring me to my next point. It is incredibly difficult to get one’s ideal housing; it seems that one piece of the puzzle is always missing. For example, assuming a student wants to live in a suite, the main ingredients for ideal housing are good selection numbers or times, six committed people, and flexibility. If a student wants to live in a suite, they need to have exactly five friends (plus themself), all of whom are seniors and can be flexible. The housing process, therefore, favors people with friend groups. Selection times are randomly assigned, an aspect of the process I find fair. However, if a student does not have five friends to live with and instead finds two juniors to take the double, the student’s likelihood of getting a desirable suite decreases.

Say a student has two or three people to live with: this is not enough to fill a suite and there is no way they want to live in a quad their senior year. The options now are to skip the six-pull multiples lottery and enter as a block of three or four singles. If the students still want that suite, the options are limited to living in an RA suite, potentially with people the students do not know.

Another negative aspect of the housing process is how hushed everyone is about it. When people are looking to fill the last double and start asking around, everyone seems to have the same vague answer.

“What are you doing for housing?” “Uhh, not sure yet.”

This makes the process incredibly stressful because no one wants to talk about it. And to add to the already anxiety-inducing situation, the selection now occurs over the summer when students are not even on campus to hear the whispers. They have to directly reach out to acquaintances — and oftentimes awkward experience.

Fortunately, housing always seems to come together in the end. Unfortunately, this always seems to happen the week before the lottery, causing the stress to build up from the time Hamilton sends out the email in March until the lottery in June and July. I recognize that it is not an easy job to coordinate housing for 1,900 students and I thoroughly enjoy going to a school where 100% of the student body lives on campus. At the same time, Hamilton is a growing institution. More and more students are applying each year and class sizes are not always consistent. It would be nice to see an increase in resources for students — and housing would be a great place to start.