Alyssa GregoryIf you’re in a fraternity and want housing next year… good luck. Residential Life has some new policies for you.
If a fraternity house is less than 90 percent filled by the start of the housing selection process, then all members must wait until the very last round of selection to be considered for Residential Life housing. This includes freshman pledges who are not even living in the house. If you do live in the house this year, provided that your house is 100 percent filled by the start of the housing selection process, then you will be permitted to apply for housing through the ResLife lottery. However, you will not get ResLife credit for the time you lived in the fraternity house; a junior could get the same lottery number as a sophomore.
These new rules are the product of a compromise between Residential Life and Greek Life. They aim to counter the problem of unfilled houses, which often leads to fraternity members leaving already-filled suites late in the housing process to move into their houses. However, this solution unfairly puts a large burden on new pledges, who should not be held responsible if the upperclassmen in their fraternity don’t fill their house.
Residential Life and Greek Life previously had mandated that fraternities fill their houses to 90 percent capacity; otherwise, transfer students and other upperclassmen could be assigned to the unoccupied rooms. This often led to a mid-summer exodus to the fraternity houses from the South 40, leaving empty spaces in suites.
This is understandably quite an inconvenience for Residential Life, which must then work to fill the missing space or relocate the entire suite. However, this does not justify the new rules, which unfairly affect freshmen pledges.
Because the majority of Greeks who still apply for Residential Life housing are freshmen, this rule unfairly hurts them. Many sophomores have decided to move off campus or into their fraternity houses, thus escaping the reach of this new policy. However, freshmen pledges applying for suites are exactly the group least responsible for these problems. As pledges, they are not even full members of the fraternity.
This policy does nothing to discourage upperclassman fraternity members from leaving the house unfilled, short of making it more difficult to return to ResLife housing should they so desire. The upperclassmen, the ones actually living in the houses responsible for this problem, can easily escape the consequences as long as they do not want to move back on campus.
Because of this new rule, freshmen pledges of a fraternity house not in compliance will be forced to wait until the very last round of placement to be considered for Residential Life housing. Because of this, they will have a significantly harder time finding people willing to form a suite with them, knowing that most suites fill well before the last round. This represents an extreme lack of consideration for these freshmen, many of whom have no intention of living in their house at any point during their time at WU.
Yet another slap in the face, members living in the house who want to return to Millbrook or the South 40 will get a lottery number consistent only with the number of semesters they lived in Residential Life. Their time in the house is not included. However, because of Residential Life’s and Greek Life’s strict house-filling policies, many people who otherwise would not live in the houses are forced to each year. Those individuals will not be given the same consideration if they wish to return to Residential Life.
Even more distressing is that during a recent RA training session, a representative from Residential Life described this new process as ‘doing a favor’ to fraternities and said that they should be grateful, since they previously would only allow members to return to the South 40 on a space-available basis. This is not a favor; it is a commitment that Residential Life should make to all its students. Because of the policies that essentially compel some members to live in a fraternity house, these students should be given equal consideration in the housing selection process. To call this a favor is to ignore Residential Life’s responsibility to its students.
We understand the predicament that Residential Life experiences each year with housing. However, punishing freshmen pledges for this problem is more than slightly inconsiderate.