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How exactly did the prospects for General Selection get so dire? Director Guru of Housing and Bwog’s new best friend Joyce Jackson explained that of course “it is always hard to say how many people will drop down to General from Suite Selection.” While she noted that fewer students have been moving off campus in the past two years, it is her belief that the 50 students displaced from the brownstones were “the primary cause of the change.” In an e-mail to Bwog, Jackson wrote:
Because the three brownstones were not assigned prior to selection, those approximately 50 students were also seeking housing in Suite and General Selection, and the 50 spaces they would have been assigned to in the Brownstones were not available for other students to select.
On this note, if there was any confusion among rising Juniors after last week’s post, this has also been clarified by Joyce. She assures us that “a lot” of Juniors will be assigned to singles that become available during the summer, but “some will be assigned to space in the brownstones and University Apartment housing which will be quality doubles and walk through doubles like Watt and Woodbridge.”
You can view a live table of the rooms left for General Selection here.
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13 Comments
@Anonymous So… it’s all well and good that Columbia is trying to make sure juniors end up with decent housing, but what about the rising sophomores in general selection? Does NOBODY care about us?
@actually did anyone look at what happened to the devaluation of higher-value rooms into lower-value rooms? ex, the ruggles 4’s that became ruggles 5’s (seniors may have not wanted the ruggles 5 and instead drop into singles), and all of the singles now-doubles in mcbain etc that mean that net net, there are probably a lot more than 50 less single-occupancy rooms in the lottery this year than last year (ignoring the brownstone business)
@Anonymous Is Bwog going to mention when or where the summer transfer info session is supposed to be?
@Haha On campus housing. Even the nicest of the nice is still fucked. Me and 3 bros have been off campus for two years, got a 4br that is cheaper than what we would pay Columbia for those cracker boxes they call suites and rooms. The more people you get together the better off campus housing can get. We got 4br 2ba plus our own washer and dryer and 1000 sqft of common space off of 108th between broadway and riverside for 3.5k per month which includes utilities, cable, and internet. Furnished for free because all of our parents had extra furniture they just threw our way. Just saying you got options if you got friends who can pay bills on time. EC is shit compared to what we got, I haven’t visited any campus housing that just didn’t make me feel depressed for them, I certainly don’t miss my John Jay days. Plus nobody pisses in the elevators in our building.
@can't pay the bills on time well aren’t you entitled.
@Anonymous So, basically, this entire explosion of housing craziness is due to the ineptitude of Columbia administrators:
1) They kick these frats out of the brownstones with no regard for the impact of that decision the wider Columbia community, including people who are completely indifferent to frat-related social scene, who just want housing.
2) They are surprised by a trend in which fewer students are willing to pay for off-campus housing in New York City that is reasonably near the school.
3) They fail to recognize that all of these factors (and the removal of an easy route for seniors to get guaranteed singles in EC) will increase demand for singles, and therefore fail to add housing options until after the normal suite/general selection process.
4) They admit more students without sufficiently increasing housing options, essentially replacing Furnald (192 singles) with Harmony (80 singles).
I really hope there is some sort of consequence for the people who made these poor decisions. Or is it, rather like the government, a situation in which those who make poor decisions receive no real consequences, and those who are affected by their poor decisions take all the heat?
I don’t want whine this much, because Columbia housing is above average for most schools. But at the same time, you would think that at the very least we would maximize the options that we have, and not try to fix things at the last minute (after both suite and general selection), causing a bunch of stress and confusion. (Speaking of which, what about an information session for juniors? Is it happening, and if so, when…?) Or, if the average quality of housing is going to get worse at Columbia, admit that, so it can affect how people think about Columbia, rather than the current rather cheap trick of giving freshmen better housing than they will get again until they are at least juniors, and sometimes seniors, so that decline in quality of housing options doesn’t hurt the precious idol of recruitment.
@Anonymous Why don’t seniors have a guaranteed route to singles in EC? Three seniors + 2 juniors in the double = ECX. Just as it’s always worked.
Your overall point is a good one though.
@Anonymous Well, yes, we know that now, but the problem was the uncertainty that housing introduced into the system—seniors weren’t aware that it was a guaranteed route into EC, which should have been fairly obvious to the housing staff, given a basic understanding of, well, people.
That said, I’ll definitely be considering 3senior/2junior for my senior year. Ultimately I think the ECX change was really smart (less demand for Ruggles, more suite options for nonseniors, even more suites of varied point values, which I think is good), it’s just that with all those other factors, housing didn’t take enough into account. But whatever. I’ll enjoy my room in Wien and visiting my senior friends in EC… sigh.
@Anonymous Fair enough.
@ban frats on campus! or perhaps the financial crisis –> need for more tuition money –> bigger class sizes without = expansion of housing options could be the problem. my suggestion: ban frats on campus and we can all live the high life on 114th!
@Request: Math-literate Administrators “Housing just revealed that not all juniors will be able to pick into singles in General Selection this year. There are currently 1123 juniors and seniors registered for General Selection and only 987 singles available during General Selection. This means that up to 136 juniors (though more likely 100-120, since not all upperclassmen will pick) will have to pick into the worst blind doubles left over from Suite Selection.”
136 – 50 = 86.
Plus all of the freshman – 40 = A lot of people.
As a rising senior who doesn’t have to deal with this, I still find it incredibly unfair that all except 40 freshmen who want singles are going to have to live in doubles. Columbia has been skimping out on housing, trying to accommodate rising enrollment rates by turning large singles into uncomfortably small doubles instead of taking wide-scale action to ensure quality housing for it’s undergrads. We all know that Columbia doesn’t give a shit about us, but it would be nice if they could at least convincingly pretend.
@living off campus haha
@Anonymous this is a week late. LONG LIVE THE SHAFT!