By Kyle Penn
An incoming freshman anticipates the moment when a letter will come in the mail revealing their future roommate and they hope that it will be someone compatible that will make their college experience even better.
The Department of Residence Life is responsible for matching up two students together to live with one another on campus.
According to Ryan Baumann, the Associate Director of Residence Life, the department manages the housing assignment process and their main goal is to get two students to live peacefully with each other for a semester.
Residence Life looks at the preferences of the incoming housing students and does their best to place them in spots accordingly. The preferences they look at are if the student requested a roommate, what their hobbies and interests are, what type of music they prefer and what dorm building they requested.
“There are residence halls that students are excited to get into and other ones where students are not as excited. Unfortunately, the residence halls that don’t receive a lot of interest usually have a higher number of beds,” Baumann said. “You can’t put 20 pounds of potatoes in a 10 pound sack. That’s the biggest thing.”
Some students said that they were not matched up with their roommates well.
“It didn’t really seem like they even looked at the sheet we filled out to match us up with a roommate,” said sophomore Colleen Costin. “My roommate and I had nothing in common.”
Freshman Summer Nagy said that the things taken into consideration for matching roommates aren’t enough.
“I think it’s a good idea matching people with the likes and dislikes we put on the application. But I feel like they could do more,” Nagy said.
Another common complaint among students in housing is the amount of waiting they have to go through to find out who they will be living with.
“Waiting was tough and nerve-wracking,” Nagy said. “It would be nice to get to know the person before you have to start living with them.”
The current process that the department is using has been in effect for all four years that Baumann has been the Associate Director. Baumann said there has been slight modifications made in order to boost the overall success.
According to Baumann, the old process was,“very difficult and not very transparent.”
Baumann said the old system had its uses but that everyone has pretty much outgrown it. Communication has sped up and that the housing application process has been streamlined a little bit. To go along with the modifications and tweaks, the future process may be changed in order to improve the results. He also said he would like to automate the systems, taking an online route to do everything.
“We try to make the process as easy as possible and I am always happy if a student has a question or comment,” said Baumann. “We really try to have a high level of integrity for this whole process.”
Baumann said that the current system has been working; he knows there is always going to be concerns and problems, but he assures students that things are going to get worked out.