I happened to notice while reading “Housing” (4/7/04), that Tim Lempfert said, when responding as to why study abroad candidates do not receive preferential treatment, that it would “undermine the lottery and petition process.” He had earlier said that lottery numbers are assigned randomly, “to assure the fairness of [Reslife's] process” Well, now isn’t that sweet? Apparently Reslife’s feels that their system was designed and acts with an unbiased fairness towards all students. I would take confidence in that statement if it were indeed true.

Sure, the general lottery system assigns its numbers randomly, and yes, that is a fair practice. Yet, what about the other lotteries that take place even before Round 1? Some of you may know what I am talking about, the ones where certain people already living in one part of a residential college immediately gain precedence over those who don’t? For example, if you live in Danforth, you have the opportunity to participate in a special lottery just for your res-college, and basically get to pick which rooms you want in Wheeler or Shepley for the next year. The same goes for the residents of Lien/Gregg, Nemerov, Park/Mudd, and University House. Now, I take issue with this for mainly three reasons.

First, if you live in one of these dorms and happen to get a really bad general lottery average, you can just choose to participate in the res-college process to avoid being shipped off to the Village. What about the residents of Liggett/Koenig, Ruby/Umrath, and Lee/Beaumont? What can they do if they end up with a horrible average? Absolutely nothing, because those res-colleges are freshman only; I guess we just have to suck it up and prepare for life in the Village, since Reslife has assured us that their process is unbiased.

Second, why are HIG and JKL excluded from the system? I think it’s somewhat sketchy that only new dorms can participate. I might not even have written this if I knew the six-person suites had their own lottery too. It seems the rich get richer and the poor get screwed. If you are assigned such new housing, you could potentially be secured in the knowledge that if you so choosed you could stay in that res-college your entire college career. What becomes of the people who applied for new dorms, but were denied? They get shafted. It’s like hearing, “Sorry, you didn’t make the cut. Have fun in the Village, because unless a few residents decide not to live in [insert dorm here], you never live on the 40 again. Bwahahaha.” OK, so I over-dramatized a bit. Even so, it still isn’t right.

Lastly, and even more seriously, with the latest rise in tuition and room and board, housing costs can become a serious issue, even to the point of deciding whether a student can afford to stay at Washington University. I have a friend who has been compelled to apply for a transfer to another university for this very reason. It’s bad enough that I can’t even get the Office of Student Financial Services to guarantee a rise in my award to match rising costs; now I sit and watch others hop from dorm to dorm with comparative ease, while I wait for my fate to be decided by a corrupt process. Is it fair that a certain dorm can secure what type of housing you receive and that financial need cannot? And while I realize that college costs and financial aid deficits are not the fault of Residential Life, the lottery and housing petition process is something that they can control.

So, forgive me, Mr. Lempfert, but I think you are wrong. Not only is the housing selection process not random, but corruption and bias have been interwoven into the system. Of course, I may be just an ignorant freshman who can’t understand the complexities of Reslife’s processes. But if I’m wrong, then the Village is the happiest place on Earth.

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