The daunting question of housing is slowly creeping into the minds of all Cabrini students. It is the time of year that puts people on edge. There is good news however. The housing process has been changed and is supposed to be simpler than ever before.
How the process worked before was that students who wanted to live on campus would come to Residence Life and draw a number from a lottery box. Then, they would put that number on a preference sheet listing their preferred housing and also whom they would like to live with in terms of roommates. Once this sheet was turned in, all the paperwork went through Residence Life where students were placed as close to their desired living as possible.
With this system, students often became confused with their housing, how their lottery number correlated to where they were placed, and why the system took until later in the summer to be fully complete. One of the major issues that caused these changes were the lateness of people getting back to Residence Life that they decided to live off campus, transfer or commute. These issues left Residence Life with the responsibility of filling the spaces left by those leaving and moving around everyone still on the waitlist for housing.
With the old system many students would just sign up for housing because it was prepared early and many were not sure of their on-campus/off-campus situations.
“So that’s why we moved it back, because we figured it would make a lot more sense,” said Assistant Director of Residence Life RJ Carroll. “People would know more about what they wanted to do if we did it later.”
This new system was created with the hopes to eliminate all those previous problems and make the process more transparent. The new system works like this: Instead of going to the Residence Life office and waiting in a line to draw numbers from a box, now there is the technological and practical method of randomization through an online spreadsheet. The randomly assigned lottery numbers will be delivered by email to all students. Then each class year will be assigned a date and time to attend their “Room Pick” meeting in the Widener Lecture Hall. Incoming sophomores’ date will be March 22, incoming juniors will be March 23, and incoming seniors will be March 24.
In these meetings you and your desired roommates will come with specific room numbers in mind to select your future housing. Be prepared to not get your first, second or even third choice! Come with as many back-up plans as possible so you can go through your room pick with ease. Once you have chosen a room you will sign all the necessary forms and then make a $200 deposit. This deposit is a new installment to the process, but rest assured that it is not an additional fee. It is merely a down payment to your housing next year. It was created to insure incentive so that students who decide against housing will contact Residence Life before June 1 to get their deposit back. This will complete housing as quickly and efficiently as possible.
