We’ll answer your esoteric housing questions. Send them to housing@bwog.com or leave ’em in the comments.

Q:  The Housing website says, “If your group does not select a suite in Suite Selection, your group may opt to stay together and select rooms in General Selection with the same appointment time, or your group may opt to break apart and select rooms in General Selection with appointment times based on your individual point values and lottery number.”

I was under the impression that when you drop from Suite to General Selection, everyone has the same lottery number. Which made me confused about the above statement– wouldn’t we have the same appointment time anyway because we would automatically have the same number? How do we have “individual” point values?

A: When your group leader sets up the group registration in the portal online, he or she will have to choose whether the group will stay together or break up, should you all drop to General Selection.

If the leader chooses the stay together option, you’ll all have the same lottery number AND point value (whatever the average of everyone in the group was) when you enter General Selection.

“This only affects mixed point groups.  Group Members all keep the same Lottery Number when they drop,” says Joyce Jackson, Executive Director of Housing. In other words, if you’re all 30-point rising seniors, and you split into individual General Selection from Suite Selection, you’ll all choose at the same time anyway.

But if you’re in a mixed-value group, your leader can choose the option to break up for General Selection, so each group member would retain the same lottery number, but choose at different times according to original point value.

Say you’re the group leader of a six-person group with three rising seniors (30-point value, each), and three rising juniors (20-point value each). Entering Suite Selection, you’ll have a group point value of 25. Back in time, when you created the group (and, for the sake of specificity, named it something involving a suite/sweet pun—your first mistake), you had the choice of whether you’d (1) stay together or (2) break up upon entering General Selection.

If (1), you will all choose your rooms at the same time during General Selection , because you’ll all have the same lottery number from your group, and you’ll all individually retain the 25-point value.

If (2), the three seniors will choose rooms at the same time, because they’ll all have the same lottery number and the same individual 30-point values. The juniors will all choose together later with their 20-point values.

So, choose wisely—the future is now.