Pick a room, any room: New room registration will be much more efficient

The new on-campus housing registration system for next year appears to be well worth the wait.

Students will be able to select the individual room of their choice, instead of merely listing four residence hall preferences. The system will help allocate dorm rooms much more efficiently.

The current system mandates that students list their residence hall preferences. Then they are assigned a room in one those preferred halls — if they are lucky. This way, students are excluded from the formal selection process and might feel slighted by not getting their first or second choice.

But the new system takes the guesswork out of the process. The ultimate outcome is dependent upon the students’ ability to find the best possible room.

It takes the responsibility for allocation away from the Department of Housing and Residential Education and directly empowers students to choose.

A similar system was abandoned six years ago after significant difficulties with technology.

While the concept is the same for the new housing assignments, the computer system is better-equipped to handle the traffic. The database is supported by the Residential Management System, which has more than 200 clients across the country.

Rick Bradley, assistant director for communication and assignments, said that by waiting longer to move to a live registration system, the University has allowed other universities and colleges to deal with the initial bugs. What were problems four to five years ago have since been corrected, he said.

One of the potential drawbacks for the system is the difficulty for large groups of students to secure an entire suite without other students registering for those rooms.

Fortunately, the housing department will allow prospective suitemates to manually register at their offices at Student Academic Services Building North.

The department has planned for a sound transition to a better housing registration system that will better serve all of students’ housing preferences.