upset Housing process annoys students

In the first week coming back to campus, resident students received a housing information letter regarding the 2004-2005 academic year. The letter outlined the requirements students had to meet to be a resident for next year. The letter also said that students had to hand in intent-to-return to housing forms by Friday, Jan. 30. If ~ou did not hand in your form, you were not eligible for campus housing. Even if you did hand in your form, the vagueness of the letter made it seem like getting a spot on campus was bleak.

The haziness also produced a slew of questions and concerns, causing the campus rumor mill to blow up. Many students and parents questioned the staff in the Residence Life office about the letter and the housing pr~ Residence Life gave.differentanswersto the same questions, causing more aggravation on the students' part. The big question is still not answered-what will happen to those students who do not get housing?

The housing forum that was held on Wednesday, Jan. 20, was supposed to appease the concerns of the students and help them understand what will happen. The forum, which was held at 4:30 p.m., when many students were in class, only made students more aggravated. The consensus around the dining hall the day after the forum was 'why is this happening to us?'

The majority of students are upset that they may not be able to live on campus next year and rightfully so. The situation would have been a lot easier to swallow for the resident population if Residence Life would have notified students last semester that they may be looking for housing elsewhere. Instead, students will not know about their resident status until March, when it may be too late for students to find off-campus housing.

The Loquitur staff is usually divided on campus issues, but the majority agree that students are getting the short end in this deal. Residence Life keeps giving some students and parents the runaround and the others are getting straight answers. This should not be happenmg.

In order to keep the already uneasy and angry resident population from hysteria, the administration, not just Residence Life, needs to have uniform answers to the questions. The students feel annoyed and frustrated about what is happening to them, and the ambiguous answers from Residence Life are not helping the process.

In all fairness to Residence Life, they do have to deal with the influx of students. The administration is to blame for the overpopulation. They failed to see when they were accepting all of these students that a problem was going to occur, and now Residence Life is taking the heat for it. The college is never going to improve if the administration keeps ignoring the problems and the housing process is a perfect example of this.