During the three-day housing selection process, students across
campus may find themselves splitting their screens between
assignments and Brown’s housing portal, refreshing the page as they
wait for their pre-assigned timeslot.
As selection continues, housing options dwindle. The Herald’s Data
Desk looked at last year’s housing trends to see which dorms
are filled first and will provide real-time updates of available dorms
during the three-day selection process.
This information has been synthesized into a campus map with each
residence hall color-coded based on percentage availability.
Students can filter this information based on their preferences,
such as room type and gender, and can control a slider that shows
room availability over time.
Eden Ben-Shoshan ’28, the executive vice president of the Residence
Hall Council, said in an interview with The Herald that her biggest
advice for the housing lottery is to “go in with a plan” and “know
who you want to live with.” She joined the RHC because she “felt it
would have been nice” for someone living in a dorm to “advocate” for
her and “propose solutions to common problems.”
“Start touring dorms,” Ben-Shoshan said, highlighting tours held by
the Office of Residential Life where students can see the size and
facilities of different dorms. “I think that was a really great way
for me to inform where I might want to live,” she added.
Along with the map, The Herald also created a line graph
highlighting the overall percentage of housing available based on
room types and sizes.
Eno Thomson-Tribe ’29 applied to the Environmental Program House, the
Wellness Residential Experience at Sternlicht Commons and to be a
Community Coordinator. He was rejected by all three and will now
enter the general selection housing lottery.
Thomson-Tribe described the application processes for EPH and
Wellness as “deceptively simple.”
“Two questions that are 300 characters each is nothing to be able to
go off of to get a sense of whether someone will be a good fit to
live somewhere for an entire year,” Thomson-Tribe said in an
interview with The Herald.
While the general housing selection process has remained the same,
the process for program and theme housing have
changed from previous
years. Residents of program- and theme-based housing are now
selected in a randomized lottery instead of by the respective
houses’ leadership groups. This change excludes Greek Houses and the
Substance-Free or Recovery Community.
“It kind of feels like ResLife has been working against students’
interests a lot this semester” and “there’s been very little
transparency,” he said. “It feels like they’ve been directly
undermining the house leaders’ efforts to build community and to
create affinity spaces.”
Assistant Vice President for Residential and Community Living Brenda
Ice wrote in an email to The Herald that their main goal is to
“ensure housing is both fair and open to everyone.” The approach of
pre-screening applicants and utilizing a lottery system is intended
to “strike a balance” so “program leaders can still engage with
applicants to understand their interest in specific communities,
while students can be confident that final placements are made
through an impartial process.”
Ice also noted that ResLife is making improvements to their housing
processes each year in an effort “to create an equitable and
transparent process for all students” and that appropriate changes
to residential life processes are “made to ensure students’ needs
are addressed.”
Samaira Gupta ’28 applied for religious housing last year — she
identifies as Hindu and said that specialized housing enables her to
more easily practice her faith.
“If I’m sleeping with my prayers on, it lets me hear them while I’m
sleeping. It also gives you a kitchen to cook if you’re not
non-vegetarian, which is really helpful,” she said in an interview
with The Herald.
“For Diwali we were able to put up a mandir in our suite, but you
normally can’t in a normal house setting,” she added.
For Gupta, one of the “cool” things about religious housing is that
people can “apply across different religions.” One of her current
roommates doesn’t follow the same religious practices.
Ishaan Iyer ’28 also applied for religious housing during last
year’s housing process. Iyer said that in his essays, he referenced
his “dietary restrictions” and “other religious reasons, such as
pujas.”
Iyer was then assigned to live in a double in a suite this year with
the two students he initially applied for housing with, as well as
three students in the year above him.
Iyer also applied to quiet housing — where he was waitlisted.
Overall, Iyer said he is happy with how his housing situation worked
out. Next year, Iyer will be living in Goddard House, as he rushed
and pledged Alpha Delta Phi and will live in the group’s
designated housing.
Audrey Su ’28 chose to participate in the on-campus general housing
lottery last year — she had heard Wellness was “pretty difficult to
get into” and wasn’t interested in program housing. After Su and her
roommate both got “terrible” timeslots, they started “looking for
rooms that (they) didn’t think other people might be going for,” she
said.
This spring, Su said she is hoping to select a suite in Danoff Hall
or Chen Family Hall through the housing lottery.
Although Wellness has suites, the new housing guidelines
mandate that students are accepted to the dorm before choosing their
groups.
Su has seen this “split a lot of groups that might have otherwise
gone for wellness together.”
In response to this, Ice wrote that ResLife has “made adjustments to
accommodate as many students as possible” which in some cases,
“requires changes to how groups are formed.”
“We recognize that these changes may feel frustrating for some
students, and we take that feedback seriously. We are actively
monitoring how the process is working this year and will continue
working with student leaders to ensure students feel supported
throughout their residential experience,” she added.
