Heck Yes, You Will Go

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Author: Tyler Kearn

It’s not fair that over the summer, Housing kicked people out of the rooms that they had signed up for at room draw. Yes, they have the right to do it. Yes, they have their reasons. No, they still shouldn’t have done it. And they should have let the people know they were doing it.

At first glance, it doesn’t really seem like there were that many students who were involuntarily moved. Only residents of Norris Orange and the Haines Annex were moved without their consent. But if you add up the numbers, you realize that the Annex houses 54 students and Norris Orange houses 30. There were as many as 84 students who were kicked out of the rooms that they had signed up for the year before. (Though to be fair, the number might be slightly fewer than 84, because not all the rooms would have been completely full.)

I understand housing’s reasons. A much higher number of first-years was accepted than had been anticipated, and they realized at some point over the summer that there were too many first-years to pull off their plan of sticking them all together in Braun, Stewie, and Pauley. They decided that their best course of action would be to put the rest of the first-years in Norris Orange and Haines Annex. Housing, which didn’t really have a place to put the excess first-years, was in a predicament, but they were trying to do the best they could and I appreciate that.

The only problem with their plan was that people were already assigned to live in the rooms where they wanted to put these extra first-years. Housing does have the right to relocate you to any room they want at any time they want-it’s right there in the contract you sign at room draw. While I understand the importance of housing to have this power, it’s not one that they should use without the utmost consideration for current residents, and certainly not on such a large scale as per this summer.

OK, so Housing had their reasons and were within their rights-what’s so unfair about it? Well, I have two major problems about the way it was done. One, they didn’t give students the option to not move if they wanted to. Two, they didn’t tell students about it.

Many students in other parts of Haines were given the option to give up their room and instead have their choice of another open room on campus. In other words, they were asked to volunteer to give up their rooms. A lot of people took them up on it, too. My hallway is largely first-years. In fact, of the triples in our hall, only one doesn’t have first-years in it. The best thing is that it worked out for both sides-I know many people who are in rooms that they are much happier with because they were given the option to switch rooms. While I can’t say whether or not giving everybody the option would have led to enough open rooms for all the first-years, they should have at least tried it first. If nothing else, it would have made a lot of people happier. They should have only booted people out if necessary.

What I think was the least fair of all to the students was that, in addition to being kicked out of their assigned rooms, they weren’t told about it. People discovered that their room had changed on them by looking at the student directory. Word spread, but no one seems to have actually been notified of the change by Housing. Daniel Landesman, class of 2010 and one of the people who was supposed to live in Norris Orange, described how he found out: “The whole thing spread by word of mouth. My roommate called me and pointed it out to me . . . I still think they handled it badly. They should have let us know.” There’s even the rumor (though unsubstantiated) that a small number of people actually arrived at Oxy on move-in day unaware of the change, went to the wrong dorm and had to be re-directed to their new rooms. Whether that is true or not, it was still very disrespectful to not properly notify students that they were being moved.

Housing did what they did for a reason, and they certainly had the right, but how they actually went about doing it created a very unfair situation for the students who were unlucky enough to have signed up for a room in one of the places that suddenly became first-years-only. Housing certainly could have given more people the option to volunteer to move, and they definitely should have let people know what they were doing. There’s nothing more disconcerting than getting a phone call in the middle of the summer and realizing something that you thought was set in stone has actually changed on you, without you being made aware of it by the college. In fact, if Housing could have just communicated better-a lot better-most of the animosity that people are currently feeling towards them wouldn’t exist.

Tyler Kearn is an undeclared sophomore. He can be reached at tkearn@oxy.edu.

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