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the housing lottery
Apr. 12th, 2010 02:11 pmOh my God, I don't think there's anything more stressful in the world than trying to get housing. Tulane does a housing lottery and housing is only guaranteed for freshmen and sophomores, and for next year they only had one dorm open for juniors and seniors -- Aron Apartments, which is what my friends and I (who currently share a four-person suite in a sophomore dorm) wanted to go into anyway. So far, so good. We'd previously been told that they were also going to open up another dorm (not apartment-style) and the off-campus apartments (highly inconveniently located) for juniors and seniors too, but apparently not enough rising upperclassmen applied for on-campus housing for them to do so. Have I mentioned that my class ('12), the current freshman class ('13), and the incoming freshman class ('14) are all record numbers of students? And they just got rid of one dorm (Modular Housing, a.k.a. the Tulane Trailer Park, a.k.a. the post-Katrina temporary housing that was supposed to be gone two or three years ago but hung around until this year), which is actually a mercy because Mod has more cockroaches than residents, but which doesn't help the whole housing situation.
Now, we got our housing selection times on Friday -- my roommate Texas has the first slot for juniors, noon today, so we figured that we'd just use her to get a four-person apartment and she'd pull us in. We all wrote down our RMS ID numbers, the two of us who had classes they couldn't miss (Texas and Alaska) went off to their classes, Chicago came over just in case none of us would be here, I figured I'd be late to my 12 o'clock, and New York was here. Should be a walk in the park, right? Anyone who has ever done university housing sees the problem here: we assumed that there would be an open four-person apartment. WELL THERE WASN'T.
At first we tried to get one of the apartments with three open slots, figuring since Alaska actually has friends outside of our merry band, she could probably get housing elsewhere. Well, we couldn't, because apparently those two apartments were already occupied by MEN VILE MEN and Tulane won't allow mixed-gender living arrangements. Then we started panicking, because we could only put TWO people in to an apartment, which left two people out in the cold, and definitely by the time the rest of our housing slots rolled around there would be no housing left. New York and I started calling Texas and Alaska in panic while Chicago tried to figure it out.
Chicago actually currently lives in Aron, and expects to be abroad next year, but she retained a bed space in Aron anyway just in case UCL rejects her and she's stuck at Tulane instead of going to London. This is important. Remember this. Anyway, we brought her over in case none of us were here so that she could get us our housing. Now, here is the sort of not really funny part: Texas and Alaska are, on average, very steady, calm people. (Thankfully for the world, they are respectively psych and pre-med.) New York and I are most certainly not steady, calm people; we are the flighty, panicky, "O, la, sir, I believe I am about to swoon!" types. (We are also both liberal arts majors -- she's English writing, I'm MEMS/Classics/English lit -- so make of that what you will.) Chicago is sort of in the middle (English lit/gender and sexuality studies). She flips a coin on her iPhone and uses Texas's ID to pull me into the four person apartment with two open living spaces, then, in a moment of sheer, panicked brilliance, logs into the housing website using her own housing ID and pulls Alaska and New York (roommates since freshman year) into the five-person apartment she's living in. She is not supposed to be able to do this, as she signed a form waiving all her rights to choose her living space or her roommates when she retained a room in Aron as an individual. But the computer lets her do it anyway. In the immediate panic, she puts Alaska in one half of a double and New York in a single, but never mind -- we all have beds. New York is in tears by this point, but revives to call Alaska (in class, by the way) and tell her that we all have beds.
Chicago, doubtful about the legality of pulling people in when she's waived her right to do so, calls HRL and finds out that although she wasn't technically supposed to do so, because retaining as an individual is a brand new thing, there's a glitch in the system that allowed her to do so and as a result New York and Alaska have beds. They might do some room-hopping in August when we move in depending on what their new suitemates want to do (since Alaska's in a double), but they have beds, and Texas and I have singles in a four-person (with two suitemates that, after Facebook stalking, appear to be seniors with a 2010 graduation date), and even if we don't get to do room-juggling in August, no one is sleeping in a dumpster! Meanwhile, Chicago let us in to the complex so that we could go and find our apartments; New York and Alaska are living on the third floor not far from the laundry, and Texas and I are in the most obscure corner imaginable.
Also, I missed my class, via panicking, and am still worked up, and will possibly someday calm down enough to do something like study.
Now, we got our housing selection times on Friday -- my roommate Texas has the first slot for juniors, noon today, so we figured that we'd just use her to get a four-person apartment and she'd pull us in. We all wrote down our RMS ID numbers, the two of us who had classes they couldn't miss (Texas and Alaska) went off to their classes, Chicago came over just in case none of us would be here, I figured I'd be late to my 12 o'clock, and New York was here. Should be a walk in the park, right? Anyone who has ever done university housing sees the problem here: we assumed that there would be an open four-person apartment. WELL THERE WASN'T.
At first we tried to get one of the apartments with three open slots, figuring since Alaska actually has friends outside of our merry band, she could probably get housing elsewhere. Well, we couldn't, because apparently those two apartments were already occupied by MEN VILE MEN and Tulane won't allow mixed-gender living arrangements. Then we started panicking, because we could only put TWO people in to an apartment, which left two people out in the cold, and definitely by the time the rest of our housing slots rolled around there would be no housing left. New York and I started calling Texas and Alaska in panic while Chicago tried to figure it out.
Chicago actually currently lives in Aron, and expects to be abroad next year, but she retained a bed space in Aron anyway just in case UCL rejects her and she's stuck at Tulane instead of going to London. This is important. Remember this. Anyway, we brought her over in case none of us were here so that she could get us our housing. Now, here is the sort of not really funny part: Texas and Alaska are, on average, very steady, calm people. (Thankfully for the world, they are respectively psych and pre-med.) New York and I are most certainly not steady, calm people; we are the flighty, panicky, "O, la, sir, I believe I am about to swoon!" types. (We are also both liberal arts majors -- she's English writing, I'm MEMS/Classics/English lit -- so make of that what you will.) Chicago is sort of in the middle (English lit/gender and sexuality studies). She flips a coin on her iPhone and uses Texas's ID to pull me into the four person apartment with two open living spaces, then, in a moment of sheer, panicked brilliance, logs into the housing website using her own housing ID and pulls Alaska and New York (roommates since freshman year) into the five-person apartment she's living in. She is not supposed to be able to do this, as she signed a form waiving all her rights to choose her living space or her roommates when she retained a room in Aron as an individual. But the computer lets her do it anyway. In the immediate panic, she puts Alaska in one half of a double and New York in a single, but never mind -- we all have beds. New York is in tears by this point, but revives to call Alaska (in class, by the way) and tell her that we all have beds.
Chicago, doubtful about the legality of pulling people in when she's waived her right to do so, calls HRL and finds out that although she wasn't technically supposed to do so, because retaining as an individual is a brand new thing, there's a glitch in the system that allowed her to do so and as a result New York and Alaska have beds. They might do some room-hopping in August when we move in depending on what their new suitemates want to do (since Alaska's in a double), but they have beds, and Texas and I have singles in a four-person (with two suitemates that, after Facebook stalking, appear to be seniors with a 2010 graduation date), and even if we don't get to do room-juggling in August, no one is sleeping in a dumpster! Meanwhile, Chicago let us in to the complex so that we could go and find our apartments; New York and Alaska are living on the third floor not far from the laundry, and Texas and I are in the most obscure corner imaginable.
Also, I missed my class, via panicking, and am still worked up, and will possibly someday calm down enough to do something like study.