Housing selection is going digital this year

Adan Ordonez, Contributing writer

Students know the housing selection process all too well as a hectic process near the end of the spring semester. While the process is straightforward, physical paper sheets and long lines for apartment and townhouse selection make for many stressed students.

This year, Mercyhurst Residence Life has revamped the paper system of the Housing Selection Process by going all online to help aid students as they select their living areas for the following year.

Every step of the process will be online now, as students will now get assigned a specific time to log in and simply choose the location that fits their desires. This benefit will only be available to those that belong to complete groups. For those incomplete groups at the time of selection, they will be taken care of after the housing process is over based on availability. The order of the housing lottery selection will be based not only on housing points, but GPA and accumulated credit hours as well.

Once the apartment has been selected, further decisions will have to be made. Students will also now be able to select specific rooms and beds from the online program. This update was implemented with the hope of increasing communication and reducing the risk of roommate quarrels. This change comes to relieve victims of protracted housing processes.

“Some people did have communication problems as not everyone was on the same page, and if you were trying to get together the problem was that everyone had different schedules and priorities,” Dillon Pierce, a senior Hospitality Management major said.

There are also some tweaks in the housing contract itself. Instead of only deciding if you wanted to live with a smoker, students can now specify at what times they go to bed and how they study. These questions can be crucial in finding a compatible roommate.

With the new system implemented, students will have to check their emails more often. This system will email every student about the tasks that they completed and what is pending.

Students must search for and request for those that they have chosen to live with the next year through the system. After they have selected the people that make up their housing group, they will be notified by the system and will then accept or reject the invitation to be roommates. This process will make sure that everyone is on the same page.

All of these changes are made with the purpose of simplifying the process for the students and decreasing the amount of time dedicated to completing it according to Ashley McCartney, AD of Residence Life.

“It’s going to make the process more streamlined for the students, which is great for them as it won’t be as time consuming,” McCartney said.

Only time will tell how helpful these updates are, but continued feedback from students will surely contribute to improving the process.