It’s once again that time of year. The time when you scramble to find a roommate (or multiple), pray that your housing selection time is good enough or not during a class that has banned technology and desperately try to land a nicer room on campus than you had before. Naturally, all of this proves to be stressful for students. Is there anything Villanova can do to help?
The new housing portal has proved to be glitchy and confusing for students. Isabel Choi described the process as “really stressful.” She described how she and her roommates gathered in one dorm room during their housing selection time to try and figure out what to do.
“It was really confusing where to find the housing assignment,” Choi said. “We were all jittery and super nervous.”
“After navigating through the website for 10 minutes, I was still confused,” an anonymous student said.
This student’s problems only became worse from there. Since she had the earliest selection time of the three other women she was planning on rooming with, it was on her to find them a good room.
“The worst part about the website was that you had to go back and forth until you have every roommate assigned to an apartment, instead of assigning everyone to a space at once,” she said. “Other people may register for those spaces before you finish assigning everyone.”
Unfortunately, this is exactly what ended up happening to this student. Before she could add her roommates, the three remaining spots in the apartment filled up with three men. Naturally, she wasn’t pleased at this prospect and contacted Residence Life to get herself out of there.
My story certainly isn’t that panic-inducing, but I had a similar experience. A student I had been planning on rooming with had an earlier time than me, but before he could add me to the room the spot had been taken by a random student he did not know.
If anything is for certain, it’s that students are having problems with the housing selection process. The Commons had been completely filled by the first day of junior housing selection. Of course, Villanova does not guarantee any specific type of housing to students, only that they will have a place to stay until senior year, when it becomes a lottery. It also does not say anywhere that Villanova guarantees that a person will be able to room with whom they want.
Should students just stop complaining? Are they asking for more than they are owed? I certainly don’t think so. One would assume that a prestigious institution like Villanova would be able to provide quality housing for its students, especially as they ascend in seniority. It’s a universal college experience to live in a dorm with its cinder block walls and communal bathrooms, but it’s also part of the college experience to cook in one’s own kitchen and to relax in one’s own living room.
Rooming with friends is not a luxury. It is integral to the livelihood of students. Living with someone with drastically different schedules and habits can impact one’s academic performance and mental health. We’ve all heard of horror stories of particularly incompatible roommates that end in rather nasty falling outs.
So what could Villanova do better?
“[Villanova] should release a video on how to fill out the housing form,” sophomore Julianna Lee suggested.
This would be an amazing start, as any of the initial problems students had revolved around navigating the new housing portal itself. I would also reaffirm the anonymous student’s earlier point, as many problems could be avoided if students could add all their roommates to a room with one click instead of having to do so individually (by which time slots could be taken).
Then, of course, comes the problem of housing itself. On-campus housing is essential for many students who can not afford to live off-campus. Doing so would necessitate having a car to drive to campus (parking is a whole different entity that this article won’t tackle) and early negotiations of the lease to get the best deal possible.
Ultimately, I have no easy answer to the larger problem of not enough rooms on campus. Dictating that Honors students or those who participate in Sophomore Service Learning Community to not receive better housing seems unfair when one could argue that they have earned it. That then opens up the possibility that the housing order comes down to certain achievements or traits, contrary to the randomness that housing selection times are supposed to be. Perhaps the answer lies in simply not admitting more students than we can handle. Hopefully, the housing selection process will be smoother in the coming years.
