News-Letter

Along with the quality of food, the quantity of homework and the amount of time spent in the library, one of the top complaints among Hopkins students is the bureaucracy. Dealing with the many departments and divisions of Hopkins can be a hassle; although it often cannot be helped.

However, the ridiculously inconvenient arrangement between the Office of Residential Life and the Housing Office in regard to choosing Residential Advisors and registration for the Upperclassmen Housing Process could be fixed quite easily.

The Residential Life and Housing Offices have coordinated RA selection such that those who are not chosen as RAs, like me, and those who are chosen, but decide not to accept their offers, are out of luck when it comes to landing satisfactory on-campus housing situations.

This year, the date for notification of RA selection was Tuesday, Feb. 20, the day after online registration for upperclassmen room selection ended. This means that all RA applicants who wanted university housing as a back-up plan had to register for housing with the possibility of disturbing their housing group's plans if they were chosen as RAs.

If I had been picked to be an RA, my group would have had three options: find another person to take my place, keep the group with one fewer person and have a random person added in late spring or summer, or reduce the size of the group and pursue a different housing option.

Understandably, it was very difficult for me and for other potential RAs to find a group, since there was a chance we would have to drop out. Luckily, I was able to register with one of my friends who was willing to be in a single or a double. Even so, I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt when all my other friends excluded me while they were forming groups and getting excited about living together next year.

Not only was being rejected by Residential Life as an RA after an extensive selection process (one that included attending an informational session, completing an application, going through a three-hour group process replete with introductions and role playing and an interview) disappointing, but to be unable to live with my ideal combination of friends was pretty upsetting as well.

The last opportunity for housing groups to be altered was Feb. 21 at noon, leaving almost no time (about one day) for rejected RA applicants to confer with others about making changes. Plus, most people determined the friends with whom they wanted to register well in advance of the beginning of online registration for housing, which was Feb. 9. It's as though no one in the Housing and Residential Life offices even considered that some students would be left in an untenable position.

A friend of mine who also wasn't chosen as an RA for next year, and didn't want her name to be used for this article, agrees that the RA Staff Selection process and the Upperclassman Room Selection process should not overlap. She almost ended up in a worse situation than mine, scrambling to find someone to live with time running out.

"At least they could make RA notification before the end of housing registration," she suggested. "Why did we have to find out if we were chosen or not the day after the cut-off for registering for housing when it was too late?"

It really makes no sense that Residential Life and Housing cannot work out this scheduling snafu. In fact, the RA Selection Process should end well before students can even begin to register online for housing. The date for RA notification should be at least a week or two before students can sign up for housing online. That way those who are not chosen as RAs or end up not accepting the position have plenty of time to recover and form a group with their friends.

There is no reason why those who don't end up as RAs, including my friend and I, shouldn't have the same opportunity as everyone else to live with the right collection of roommates. Why burn us twice?

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