When attempting to assign housing for nearly 3,500 students in only 11 residence complexes on campus, an effective system is essential to student satisfaction.  Many students who live on campus have said in the past that they found the system for assigning housing to be frustrating or unfair. Last year, SLU found more success when adopting a lottery system in assigning housing for upperclassmen.

Joshua Walehwa, director of Housing and Residence Life, said that the process for housing assignments has been slightly adjusted. Students select housing via SelectRoom, an online interface. Unlike last year, all students are eligible for the lottery selection process, which allocates the order in which students can access SelectRoom.

“This is the second year of the SelectRoom online process. The access times are given by lottery this year,” Walehwa said. “Last year, it was a lottery for juniors and [seniors], and a priority system for rising freshmen.”

This year, the priority system for underclassmen will be replaced by a lottery system.

If a student applies to be in a Learning Community or Specialty housing, his or her space is manually assigned.  The remaining students will be entered into the lottery. Walehwa said that in the SelectRoom process, students go online and select their desired housing unit. The lottery gives students a specific access time to log-on and choose a room online.  There will no longer be mandatory housing meetings to choose room assignments.

Despite the attempt to be fair by using the lottery system, there will still be chances for some students to receive their first housing preference.  If a student has a GPA below a 2.0, he or she is not permitted to live in an on-campus apartment. Conduct sanctions can also be a limitation.

Whether or not the old system was deemed unfair, the current protocol has been updated based on several factors, including efficiency. Using the online system takes only a fraction of the time of arranging housing meetings. Still, setting up specific online log-on times is necessary.  This is shown when all students attempt logging in on registration day, thus slowing down the system.

Taylor Bautista, a current junior, lucked out last year being number seven in the lottery.  However, she does not think the lottery is a fair process.

“I think it was better when upperclassmen had first pick, then sophomores, then freshmen,” Bautista said.