Ellie Perrier

This year’s housing selection process, which kicked off on March 18, will include many changes implemented by Residential Life Services (RLS). In an effort to increase the ease of the process, housing operations altered the selection process for City Vista (CV) and deepened their involvement with Student Accessibility Services (SAS).
Housing operations, a sub-department of RLS, announced that they would remove the carpeted floors from Calvert Hall and C.W. Miller Hall as part of a routine change, hold a housing fair on March 18 on the Coates Esplanade and have more involvement with SAS for students with housing accommodations. Stephanie Keith, assistant director for housing operations in Residential Life, explained that she will be sending out personalized messages to students with accommodations to help guide them through their housing process.
“I’m hoping it gives them a sense of security and clarity in the process — to know that we know them and their needs, and that they can feel assured and confident that they’re doing the right thing,” Keith wrote in an email. “We want our process to be as easy and straightforward as possible.”
In an effort to further simplify the process, housing operations split up the selection periods for City Vista and the rest of the upper division area, with City Vista selection on the week of April 1 and selection for the upperclassmen dorms on the week of April 8. Being the most popular residence area on campus, the earlier time responds to the student demand and the limited number of available rooms.
“Simple math provides the hard truth that everyone who wants to live there won’t be able to,” Keith wrote. “Our rising juniors and seniors will know right away if a City Vista assignment is in their future or not, and then will have time to celebrate their good fortune or regroup and decide what their next best option would be.”
In the same vein, rising seniors will now take precedence over rising juniors in the housing selection for City Vista. Though the past few years have allowed rising juniors to have first pick, rising seniors now have first preference for City Vista, and they continue to have first pick with other dorms, too. Rachel Boaz Toppel, interim director of residential life, found that over half of the rising senior class wanted to live in City Vista, but assured that the process would be kept equitable for rising juniors.
“I partnered with Institutional Research and Effectiveness to figure out what our anticipated number of rising sophomores and juniors are to inform how many seniors will be able to live on campus,” Toppel wrote in an email. “I’m excited for how many seniors will have access to on-campus housing next year!”
The decision to have rising seniors choose City Vista housing first has begged the question of how equitable the process is for rising juniors. McCaden McClure, sophomore English major, described their distrust of the new system.
“CV is the first opportunity you get to have independence from Trinity. … Not having as much of a chance at CV seems really unfair,” McClure said. “It does sound like maybe I’ll have a better chance almost, but just that the change was announced so recently, especially, and the there aren’t a lot of details about it that have been put out seems weird and shady to me.”
The opportunity to have a City Vista apartment will remain the same for each class, though, with all rising juniors and seniors having an approximate 33% chance of living in City Vista. Keith remarked that even with the changes, not all seniors will be able to live on campus, and anyone planning on living in City Vista should still have a back-up plan. Jackson Delhagen, junior political science major and student desk assistant for residential life, emphasized that the changes to the housing selection process only make it more coordinated.
“I don’t think it will change too much. … I think around the same amount of juniors and seniors will probably end up living in City Vista, … but I think it’s better for students’ stress, especially because City Vista is a week before the other times. I think people will be much less stressed about housing selection this year,” Delhagen said. “It’s just a lot more cohesive in general this year.”