SGA urges open draw for seniors

Author: Zamir Ahmed

The Student Government Association (SGA) Senate approved a bill that recommended the creation of an "open" room draw system for seniors on Nov. 5. The recommendation comes after an SGA-sponsored survey found widespread student disapproval of the current room draw system.

The bill, co-sponsored by SGA President Alex Stanton '07 and Chief of Staff Isabel Yordan '07, supports allowing rising seniors and rising senior Febs to obtain a room in any non-first-year housing facility regardless of its Commons affiliation, through block draw and regular draw. Although the bill did not lay out any specific plans for determining the selection order of rooms, it did emphasize that students that have served as junior counselors would continue to be given priority over other seniors.

Despite efforts to preserve the integrity of the commons system, the proposal would disrupt the commons affiliation of seniors who draw into other commons. Under the new bill, seniors who change commons through open draw would be transferred to the commons staff of their new dorm. The measure does encourage students to continue relationships with their original commons staff but acknowledges that "residential life staffs must live and work in close proximity to the students they are responsible for."

The proposal for open senior room draw comes after a student survey found that 43.6 percent of students either disapprove or strongly disapprove of the current room draw system. The survey also found that 63.8 percent of students believe that reform to the current system is important or very important.

According to the SGA bill, "a Seniors-only 'open draw' was most heavily favored and from an administrative and organizational standpoint, this proposal generates fewer logistical problems."

The current proposal, however, could create frustration for students who remained loyal to their commons with hopes of obtaining a high room draw selection ranking in their final year.

"One problem that I forsee is that a completely open draw for seniors punishes those students who have chosen to live in a specific commons as an underclassman in order to position themselves for better senior housing," said Stanton.

The sentiment was echoed by Dean of the College Tim Spears. "There are students out there in various housing that have certain expectations about the points they have earned, certainly for next year," said Spears. "The prudent response would be, if we like this recommendation, to say maybe we'll implement it a year from now so that students have a fair warning about what will happen."

To address this problem, the SGA also debated an alternative form of the passed bill at its meeting that would factor in student loyalty to their commons in determining selection priority.

"The idea was for an 'open, but weighted Senior Draw' that rewarded students for general commons fidelity, but not for fidelity within their individual commons," said Stanton. "In this system, open draw preference would be given to students with the most number of semesters spent in any one commons. For example, a student who lived for six semesters in Atwater could draw into a Brainerd 'mod' before a student who had lived four semesters in Cook and two in Brainerd. This system would provide an incentive to remain in the same commons as a sophomore and junior, but give all students a fair chance at living anywhere, and with anyone, as a senior."

There are concerns that allowing seniors to live anywhere on campus could have a detrimental effect on relationships formed through the Commons system and students living together as underclassmen. Spears said that the concern would be one of the issues discussed in the coming weeks and would be a topic of discussion in his meeting with commons deans next week.

"We're really at the beginning of the conversation," said Spears. "It's certainly good to hear student response to the issue. My colleagues in the commons haven't really been engaged with this proposal and they're going to have their own views about whether this is a recommendation that is worth acting on."

In addition to proposing an open senior housing draw, the bill also called for allowing students to participate in room draw online. The SGA housing survey revealed that many students found the in-person room draw process to be inadequate and confusing. The bill therefore proposed for a room draw site that would inform students about their competition for any rooms and blocks, such as the point values of other groups vying for the same block. The College has already begun the process of moving away from in-person room draw to one based online, a process that would make it difficult to implement an open senior housing draw this year.

"We're already making plans to put the entire room draw online," said Spears. "The IT people have to build certain scenarios into the site so they would need these changes soon. It may be, in fact, too late in the development process to make these changes this year."

Despite student disapproval of the room draw system, it may be some time before there is major reform to the system. Spears emphasized that there are still many issues that need to be worked out with the SGA bill and other options would have to be explored before a change is made.

"I think that certainly the bill that the SGA has coming forward with gives us a good starting point to start talking about options," said Spears. "I think that are any number of follow-up questions that need to be addressed before a significant change is made."