Social Media Editor Youngweon Lee, lottery number 20/2868, rants about housing.

Why does housing have to be so hard? Every step of the process of attaining a place to live on this campus is so damn complicated. First, you have to form a housing group, during which you will lose all your friends and realize that you never had any real friends to begin with. If you’re in a group by yourself, you’ll be secluded in Broadway or something, probably. Then, your housing group analyzes the list of dorms available to your averaged point number based on the number of people in your group and pray for a decent lottery number. Then, this happens:

…and all your plans are blasted out the window.

So then you regroup (figuratively, not literally). You’re a group of two with a point value of 20, trying to live in Woodbridge. The cutoff for last year was 20/2820; you have hope. You line up a few backup options: Watt, Symposium, that one brownstone on 115th, Nussbaum, River, Harmony. You discuss whether you really want a true double. You pray that fewer people will want Woodbridge this year.

Then housing choices start and all hell breaks loose. You anxiously watch the numbers of remaining rooms tick down on Bwog’s housing coverage documents. Woodbridge high-demand is gone by the first day. Medium demand gone by the second with senior regroup. All of Woodbridge gone by day 3. The cutoff is 20/early-1000s. Because Woodbridge is gone, Watt is snatched up abnormally fast. Symposium and the brownstone have been publicized by Bwog because your own editor-in-chief wants to do you dirty, and are gone by day 3. You despair, get wasted at Bacchanal and forget to make a new plan. You frantically Facetime at 2 am on Sunday night to plan how to choose on Monday at 12:05 pm.

Now, the last thing you want to do as a rising junior is to live with a bunch of sophomores in Nussbaum. But a walk-through double with a private bathroom is starting to sound attractive after you walk into the millionth unflushed McBain toilet. You look at the available Nussbaum PB WTDs. There are five A1 lines, and two D1 lines. Okay, maybe this will be a better option than River. The rooms will be smaller (220 or 260 sq ft total as opposed to max 145 or 147 sq ft singles) but you will have a private bathroom!

Monday comes around. You leave your CC class early to go to John Jay only to find out that the other person in your housing group didn’t know he was supposed to get there early. He, fortunately, arrives just as your names are called, and after an anxiety attack or two, you choose into the Nussbaum PB WTD you wanted. You cry in the cage, but just a little. Yes, you’re going to be spending junior year in Nussbaum, but at least you’re not back in McBain!

But you find yourself asking the housing gods: what have you done to deserve a lottery number like this and the stress that comes with it? You had 1928 last year, and it just got worse from there. When will you ever be able to live in a dorm you want? Like a Woodbridge suite with a river view? Is that really too much to ask for? I’ve done nothing to deserve this. I’ve been so nice to people this year so why is karma striking its housing misfortune thunderbolts down upon my head? Catch me in Nussbaum next semester with sophomores, I guess!

2868 via Youngweon Lee