Students wishing to live on campus must enter into a lottery.
By Laurie Babinski
Art Editor
Squatters rights and a lot of units will no longer assure students on-campus housing for the 2003-04 academic year thanks to a radical change in university housing assignment procedures that administrators say will make the housing process more fair.
After several years of housing snafus that left students irate and housing staffers virtually helpless, the new system throws all students who want to live in one of the 1,854 on-campus spaces available into a lottery to assign rooms at random, with no preferences given. Students will not be allowed to ensure housing by keeping their current rooms.
“It’s fair for everyone,” Director of Housing Jim Brock said. “This is a very common procedure for most universities.”
Other changes thrown into the mix include the addition of 190 spaces — about two-thirds of the available space — in the Graduate Apartment Complex on the Drescher Graduate Campus as well as the elimination of 55 spaces at the George Page Residential Complex. George Page will be closed to undergraduates to make more room for married student housing, law school housing and other graduate housing.
The spaces on the Drescher campus, all single rooms, will be part of an honors community that requires residents to have a minimum 3.0 GPA and no record of university disciplinary probation. In addition, Brock estimated the rooms will cost an additional $1,300 per semester, though final prices have not yet been set. According to the Office of Financial Assistance, housing assistance is a standard amount and will not be increased to cover the additional cost of the rooms.
Oakwood Apartments will also no longer function as university-run off-campus housing. Students who want to live in Oakwood will be required to file a contract with roommate requests. Students will then be placed as groups — not as individuals grouped together by the university — into appropriate-sized apartments.
In addition, the shuttle service to Oakwood, which cost the university an estimated $110,000 to operate this year — will be suspended. Students will still enjoy the benefit of no security deposit, and rent will continue to be charged to student accounts, though students instead of the university will be responsible for the rent if an apartment resident moves out. Two Resident Advisors will still be assigned to Oakwood.
The new system will be put into action next week, when Housing will send an e-mail to students’ Pepperdine addresses detailing new procedures, dates and contract information. Students will have until March 24 to return the contracts to the Housing office.
Students must list their top six or seven specific housing preferences — including asking for anything from vaulted apartment ceilings to ocean views — and their roommates. Students requesting standard residence halls are only allowed to request roommates instead of full or partial suites. Towers hopefuls can, for the first time, request bathroom-mates as well as roommates. Apartment residents will also be able to request roommates and apartment mates. All requests must be mutual.
Two pools of students will then be assigned random lottery numbers via the computer. The first pool, current freshmen who are required to live on-campus their sophomore year, will be assigned to locations based on the lottery numbers. This group will be restricted to Towers and Standard Residence Halls. Once those students are placed, the second pool, which includes next year’s juniors and seniors, will be assigned.
Housing staff members are still debating posting the lottery numbers via the Internet, though Brock said students will be given their number upon request.
“This will be a huge task, to manually assign everyone,” Brock said. Students will be notified of their final assignments April 4.
Because each student, not each group, is assigned a lottery number, Brock said the “chances of living on campus increase if students submit their contracts as groups of two or four,” because once one of the student’s numbers is pulled, both or all four will have housing.
Students who do not secure housing in the lottery will be placed on a wait list. These students will then be e-mailed a questionnaire regarding positions held on campus, vehicle status and other factors that will allow Housing staff to assign points and weight the list to place students who have the most need for on-campus housing at the top of the list.
Brock expects the list, which topped out at more than 300 last year, to be much shorter this time around.
“We’re expecting fewer freshmen, so there should be more room for the upperclassmen,” Brock said.
According to Paul Long, dean of Admission and Enrollment Management, the new student enrollment target is 725 freshmen and transfers. Last year’s target was 858, with 865 actually enrolled.
“Understandably there will be people who are upset,” Brock said. “But hopefully these people will understand that we really are trying to be as fair as possible.”
The new system was implemented after several consecutive years of a major housing crunch and complaints about the system, which based housing priority on a student’s number of units. The system allowed high-credit seniors getting first dibs on third-floor ocean-view apartments or other ideal locations.
The Housing staff conducted focus groups to consolidate student feedback. Brock said they took those suggestions and, combined with research from other colleges and universities such as Stanford, created the new system.
“Everything has been a progression to make things fairer, and better for students,” Brock said.
But students like junior Julie Fulford, who has yet to experience the lottery system, are still weighing in on the issue.
“I don’t necessarily like (the new system),” said Fulford, a business major who currently lives in Lovernich’s B-Block and planned to keep her apartment. “The upperclassmen have paid their dues. I like the system better when you do it by units. It’s your last year. You should have the right.”
Some, like senior Rachel Arrietta, understand the difficulty trying to divvy up the limited spaces.
“Either way, somebody’s going to get it,” said Arrietta, a sociology major.
And that’s exactly what bothers those who, unlike Arrietta, have to deal with housing for the next few years.
“Housing is supposed to be assumed at Pepperdine,” said Jasmine Patterson, a freshman intercultural communications major who hopes to move to Towers. “They told us (when we enrolled) that there wouldn’t be a housing problem, that we’d be OK. Now I’m not so sure.”
February 13, 2003
