Room draw reform petition

To Whom It May Concern:

What Went Wrong

During the 2017–2018 academic year, Princeton University Housing and Real Estate Services (HRES) switched to a new software platform to manage the undergraduate Room Draw process. This new software platform was used to generate the draw times for both the 2018 and 2019 Room Draw.

In April 2019, the undergraduate student body received an email from HRES that a bug in the Room Draw software provided by the software vendor CBORD caused a correlation between the draw times of groups in the 2019 Room Draw and the draw times of identical groups in the 2018 Room Draw. In particular, HRES claimed that only 220 rising seniors were affected.

Despite this claim, a statistical analysis of the 2018 and 2019 Room Draws (see https://princetonhousing.github.io/) reveals that every student was affected in some way. To expand on this, it was found that strong draw time correlations exist between:

• Identical groups in multiple draws in the same year (for both 2018 and 2019). This affects students who drew with the same group in multiple draws.
• Almost all students who drew into multiple draws drew with the same group.
• Identical groups in draws in different years (in the 2018 and 2019 Room Draws). This affects students who drew with the same group in 2018 and 2019. Many students (especially rising seniors) drew with the same group in 2018 and 2019.
• The size of a group (for both 2018 and 2019). Based on empirical evidence, a group of size X is X times more likely to have a high draw time than a person drawing alone. This affects all students. In particular, by biasing draw times in favor of larger groups, students drawing in small groups are adversely affected.

Action Plan

The scope of systematic unfairness in both the 2018 and 2019 Room Draws — although inadvertent — is nevertheless extremely concerning. On the bright side, the error in Room Draw sparks a great opportunity to review what went wrong, to discuss what could be improved, and to ensure past mistakes are not repeated in the future. To address the underlying issues with room draw, we request the following steps be taken:

• Improved Feedback: Students testified that they informed HRES of suspicious correlations in the 2018 Room Draw both last year and again over a month before the 2019 Room Draw, yet their concerns were dismissed. User feedback is an invaluable tool for catching software bugs, and so we believe that a review of why students’ concerns were dismissed, as well as an improved HRES feedback and review pipeline, is paramount to improving Room Draw.
• Improved Testing: According to standard software development practices, it is unacceptable to release a product without rigorous testing. We request that a full testing suite be developed for the Room Draw software to ensure proper behavior of future Room Draws. Additionally, we request an investigation into the partnership between HRES and the software vendor CBORD, particularly with respect to the software specification HRES delivered to the vendor as well as the vendor’s internal testing process.
• Improved Transparency/Auditing: When students were contacted about the error in the 2019 Room Draw, HRES noted that they had been aware of the problem for over two weeks; however, despite a two-week period for investigation, HRES did not find (or admit to finding) the full scope of the problem. We believe that HRES owes students an explanation as to why they did not disclose the full scope of the issue if they were aware of it; if they were not aware, we request that HRES review their internal auditing process so that they are able to catch and understand similar Room Draw issues in the future should they arise.
• Improved Infrastructure: In addition to fixing draw time generation, we request an overhaul of the Housing Portal user interface. The current Housing Portal is extremely difficult to navigate, which makes the task of coordinating with a group to draw rooms and sign contracts in a very short period of time extremely stressful at best, and downright impossible at worst. The room draw site is also prone to errors, crashes and delays, exacerbated by the minutes long period in which a student is expected to draw. Furthermore, inconsistencies in data released by housing, differences in formatting, and anomalous characters in the Room Draw PDFs released to students indicate a highly manual process. We request infrastructure improvements such as increased automation and improved portal interface design to address these issues.

We request that joint student-faculty committee be formed to:

• Consider and oversee the improvements requested above.
• Produce a report detailing errors in the 2018 and 2019 Room Draws and their impact on draw fairness.
• Oversee an auditing process of the software used to administer next year’s Room Draw.

Sincerely,

Concerned Princeton University Undergraduates

The link to sign the petition may be found here.

Authors

Reilly Bova ’20

Yafah Edelman ’20

Lachlan McCarty ’22

Betsy Pu ’22

Signatories

Oliver Schwartz ’21

Reilly Bova ’20

Yafah Edelman ’20

Eric Neyman ’19

Chloe Horner ’22

Hannah Huh ’22

Melanie Porras ’21

Haeun Jung ’20

Ricky Feig ’21

Brianna Yarnoff ’20

Minjae Kim ’21

Sam Bartusek ’20

Sophia Winograd ’21

Khadijah Anwar ’22

Min Lee ’21

Peyton Brown ’21

Anmoldeep Singh ’22

Scarlett McNulty ’22

Vinay Ramesh ’20

Sara Anjum ’19

Jason Wee ’20

Kaylee Zecchin ’22

Jeremy Evans ’21

Connie Miao ’21

Justin Yan ’21

Scott Aravena ’21

Shalaka Madge ’21

Jessica Cobian ’21

Reuben Zeiset ’19

Shelby Brainard ’22

John Ahloy ’22

Rachel Marcheskie ’21

Alden Hunt ’20

Nico Cooper ’21

Ty Agaisse ’21

Nora Wildberg ’21

Marcus Curlin ’22

Adam Beasley ’20

Cameron Hayes ’21

Beverly Shen ’21

Satya Nayagam ’22

Benjamin Harrison ’22

Victor Raiskin ’21

Charles An ’22

David S. Kim ‘20

Musab Almajnouni ’22

Jonathan Chung ’21

Gabriella Pereira Feron ’19

Jenny Kaufmann ’19

Alex Yablonski ’19

Nicolas Chae ’21

Yuxin Shi ’22

Nicolas Viglucci ’19

Joseph Kim ’21

Lucy Norton ’21

Daniel Che ’20

Aria Buchanan ’22

Patricia Chen ’20

Sebastian Ortiz ’19

Aditya Kohli ’20

Travis Vandewarker ’19

Labib Hussain ’21

Liam Hunt ’19

David McElroy ’21

Cole Sandvold ’21

Diana Chao ’21

Elaine Wright ’21

Lucas da Silva Stewart ’22

Norman Xiong ’20

Dane Jacobson ’21

Janaya Bruce ’21

Tyrone Zhang 21

Max Chan ’22

Nina Grant ‘21

Christopher Leahy ’22

Emily Yu ’22

Ashley Roundtree ’21

Austin Mejia ’21

Bhadrajee Hewage ’20

Eitan Zlatin ’20

Jon Kutasov ’21

Pranav Rekapalli ’20

Emerson Thomas ’20

Chaz Bethel-Brescia ’22

William Li ’21

Aliya Ismagilova ’22

Nalanda Sharadjaya ’21

Hanzhang Ren ’22

Lucy Wang ’21

David Basili ’21

Angela Wang ’19

Jillian Quigley ’21

Kiley Coates ’20

Ben Liang ’20

Mitchell Bast ’20

Catherine Yu ’21

Kalyana Duggal ’21

Vickie Talvola ’21

Betsy Pu ’22

Alicia Liu ’22

Christine Deng ’22

Ellie Goodspeed ’21

Paige Amormino ’19

Juliet Oh ’20

Benjamin Roberts ’22

Dan Wey ’22

Letian Wang ’19

Rei Zhang ’21

Victoria Lee ’21

Lauren Ehehalt ’20

Ned Bless ’22

Caio Costa ’22

Kevin Jeon ’20

Fabiola Corral ’21

Amanda Eisenhour ’21

Alice Wistar ’20

Eric Stinehart ’20

Jack Aiello ’21

Tan Shanker ’20

Emily Cheng ’21

Hala Lachguer ’22

Nayef Kiame ’22

Aleeza Schoenberg ’22

Montagu James ’22

Miranda Wang ’22

Batya Stein ’22

Yoni Schoenberg ’19

Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman ’19

Toni Xu ’20

MaryAnn Placheril ’21

Katherine Leggat-Barr ’21

Luisa Chantler Edmond ’22

Christina Im ’22

Celia Buchband ’22

Nourhan Ibrahim ’20

Shoichi Hayashi ’22

Nicholas Kim ’21

Ryan Zhang ’22

Noah Beattie-Moss ’19

Ameena Faruki ’22

Karen Zhang ’19

Madison Schwab ’21

Nguyen Cam On ’22

Jenna Shaw ’20

Javin Lu ’22

Haley Zeng ’21

Aaron Cohen ’22

Sarah Perkins ’21

Enrique Zúñiga González ’22

Kate Semmens ’22

Jack Burdick ’19

Dana Harris ’21

Nathan Finkle ’21

Anna Qin ’21

Jake Helton ’21

Lexis Sherron ’21

Eric Tsang ’21

Aoife Bennett ’20

Brandon Callegari ’21

Misha Tseitlin ’21

Aatmik Gupta ’22

Liza Rozenberg ’22

Irina Liu ’21

Betsy Vasquez ’20

Luke Shaw ’19

Melissa Fan ’20

Stuti Mishra ’20

Aneela Kanhai ’22

Kathleen Song ’22

M. Evan Wildenhain ’19

Hannah Wang ’21

Igor Medvedev ’22

Jeremy Pulmano ’21

Natasha Montiel ’22

Helen Chen ’22

K. Stiefel ’20

Austin Harmon ’22

Manuel Gomez Castano ’20

Eric Hardy ’21

Dylan Snyder ’22

Frankie Lam ’21

Liz DiGennaro ’19

Samuel Mathers ’21

Nik Hofer ’20

Paul Kopp ’21

Siyang Liu ’21

Isabella Khan ’21

Danny Pinto ’20

Alexander Zhu ’21

Michaela Hennebury ’21

Arjun Sai Krishnan ’21

Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler ’19

Akiva Jackson ’20

Tiana Graham ’21

Jisu Jeong ’21

Ed Horan ’22

Rohin McIntosh ’21

Ben Liang ’21

Michael Hu ’21

Samantha Shapiro ’21

Beata Corcoran ’22

Milena Chakraverti-Wuerthwein ’20

Jacy Duan ’21

Aditya Cowsik ’20

Lydia Headley ’21

Anglory Morel ’21

Lilly Quach ’19

Kai Torrens ’22

Brooks Eikner ’21

Bruno Aravena Maguida ’21

Angela Yang ’21

Maxwell Chung ’21

Arielle Mindel ’21 

Justin Curl ’22

Annie Song ’21

Carson Wardell ’21

Andrew Wonnacott ’19

Zoe Kahana ’21

Isaac Velasquez ’21

Sebastian Hallum Clarke ’19

Raluca-Ioana Cobzaru ’20

Brian McSwiggen ’18

Samantha Goerger ’20

Sergey Nersisyan ’22

Evan Bryers ’19

Nicholas Shashkini ’21

Zoie Nieto ’21

Derek Poletti ’22

Carmen Chen ’21

Raiden Evans ’21

Tiffany Sun ’21

Harshini Abbaraju ’22

Michael Rodriguez ’20

Cindy Li ’22

Trisha Datta ’19

Matthew Igoe ’20

Matthew A. Penza ’19

Monique Legaspi ’22

Linda Nie ’21

Paul Kinard ’19

Corr Cooper ’21

Andreea Boaca ’21

Giscelle Rosario ’22

Kennedy Miller ’21

Aman Andemichael ’21

Jeongmin Cho ’21

Justin Coon ’22

Sebastian Holt ’19

Andrew Brown ’20

Justin Chang ’21

David Friedman ’20

Robert R. Liu ’20

Madeleine Gaynor ’22

Shir Kalati ’21

Anne Newman ’21

Jasper Gebhardt ’19

Martin Mejia ’21

June Ho Park ’20

Rohan Dhoopar ’19

Nabil Yessuf ’21

Devin Plumb ’21

Michael Hill-Oliva ’20

Nathaniel Hickok ’20

Amanda E. Haye ’19 

John Garcia ’21

Johannes van de Wetering ’21

Annette Chu ’20

Daniel Gao ’19

Cindy Song ’22

Parker Jones ’21

Regan McCall ’22

Nina Filippova ’20

Chantal Thantrong ’21

Sharon Frankel ’21

Myrha Qadir ’21

Annie MacDonald ’21

Gabriela Rivera ’20

Arul Gupta ’29

Amy Xu ’21

Ze-Xin Koh ’21

Holly Cunningham ’21

Evelyn Karis ’19

Connor Hainje ’21

Artemis Veizi ’22

Jazzmin McMyers ’21

Jessica Saint-Ulysse ’19

Andres Irribarra Ramirez ’20

Frederik Pedersen ’20

Jeffrey Barzach ’22

Narek Galstyan ’20

Nadir Noordin ’19

Ava Jiang ’21

Jamie Guo ’21

Shani Williams ’19

Felicia Saravo ’20

Sophie Torres ’21 

Jordan Brown ’19

David Haemisegger ’22

Abby Breitfeld ’20

Rachel Coe-Scharff ’19

Selena Chiu ’22

Matthew Lee ’22

Ruth Schultz ’22

Bharat Govil ’22

Rohan Tummala ’19

Alan Wong ’21

Charlie Miller ’22

Alyssa Lau ’21

Hector Betanzos ’22

Krystal Cohen ’21

William Sweeny ’20

Claire Wayner ’22

Noah Schochet ’21

Victoria Pan ’21

Maris Fechter ’19

Emily Reinhold ’21

Alex Kaplan ’21

Victoria Gasparowicz ’19

Marti Vives ’21

Rachel Inman ’20

Ayame W ’21

Sophia Wang ’22

Alvin Zhang ’20

Grace Sommers ’20

Sam Lapkin ’19

Sarah Jun ’20

Mayowa Oke ’22

Alex Williams ’21

Joshua Drossman ’22

Ryan Brott ’22

Maharan Murshed ’21 

H. R. Siegel ’20

Will Steidl ’20

Justin Tran ’20

Monica Dobrinoiu ’21

Priscilla Bushko ’19

Tina Stanley ’22

Sy Snedeker ’21

Katherine Hong ’20

Somya Arora ’21

James Packman ’21

John Ennis ’19

Rylie Pease ’21

Louison Sall ’21

Emily Sharp ’21

Stewart Stroebel ’19

Akash Pattnaik ’20

Mika Hyman ’22

Colton Casto ’21

Raphael Sitbon ’20

Christy Lee ’21

Isaac Martinez ’20

Jose Ayala Garcia ’22

Calvin Rusley ’20

Caroline Timm ’22

Lucie Gildehaus ’22

Alex Pirola ’21

Aria Wong ’20

Mallory Williamson ’21

Sydney Boyer ’21

Millicent Darko ’21

Jinn Park ’21

Kapil Chandran ’20

Shirley Klimkiewicz ’20

Martin Lee ’21

Koert Chen ’21

Zachary Schoenfeld ’19

Daniel Bauman ’22

Colby Chang ’21

Natalia Miller ’21

Sanghyun Park ’22

Sarah Barnette ’20

Grace Chen ’21

Rachel Todd ’19

Jonathan Carr ’21

Hannah Smalley ’21

Sahan Paliskara ’21

Patrick Nian ’20

Lachlan McCarty ’22

Nishaad Khedkar ’22

Carlos Giron ’21

Will Randall ’21

Bulut Cakmak ’19

Ikaia Chu ’20

Sophie Steinman-Gordon ’20

Lillian Stout ’22

Ivan Vasquez Barraza ’22

Chloe Chen ’22

Hollis Ma ’22

Paulo Frazao ’20

Erik Taylor-Lash ’21

Ethan Li ’22

Jason Fu ’19 

Sophie Chen ’22

Sultan Al Habsi ’22

Andrew Yang ’22

Morgan Steelman ’20

Marshall Schaffer ’20

Ben Angarone ’21

Lena Hu ’20

Joseph Feng ’22

Sarah Gao ’22

Aidan Chodorow ’21

Juhyun Park ’21

Jacob Zimmer ’19

Tinotenda Chinamora ’22

Adam Ziff ’22

Anika Duffus ’22

Yezekiel Williams ’21

Ananya Joshi ’19

Zak Dasaro ’21

Ahmed Farah ’22

Oleg Golev ’22

Ailee Mendoza ’21

Youqi Gang ’22

Mona Ye ’22

Joon Seo ’19

Justin Son ’21

Niko Fotopoulos ’21

Young Sheng ’19

Munisa Said ’22

Allen Liu ’22

Nisha Chandra ’21

Sean Horton ’22

James Chen ’19

Amital Haas ’21

Victoria Gorton ’21

Eli Tettelbach '18

Joice Kim ’21

Alex Cox ’20

Jeremy Du ’20

Maressa Cumbermack ’21

Rahul Saha ’22

Liam Kelly ’20

Jack Miron ’21

Edelyn Lau ’21

Jane Blaugrund ’20

Tyler Feemster ’22

Annie Carroll ’21

Nicolas Ng ’20

Jake Brzowsky ’21

Leila Ullmann ’21

Jessica Ramirez ’21

Alik Zalmover ’22

Joshua Storm Becker ’19

Nina Arcot ’20

Lauren Sanchez ’21

Jacob Walrath ’21

Arnab Banerji ’19

Lindsey Schmidt ’21

Maria Russo ’22

Carla Dias ’21

Conway Niles ’20

Andrew Kim ’22

Abigail Spare ’20

Edward Zhang ’19

Fernanda Romo ’22

Mench Santelices ’22

Elaine Zhou ’20

David Booth ’22

Julius Foo ’21

Emma Moriarty ’22

Tamia L. Goodman ’19

Jonathan Wang ’21

Lea Berthiaume ’21

Madison Manning ’20

Emily Cruz ’22

Tyler Skow ’21

Nicholas Sum ’21

Laura Molina ’21

Alyssa Finfer ’19

Emily Ryu ’21

Adam Chang '20

Joe Ort ’21

Iris Samuels ’19

Sandoval Wood ’22

Abby de Riel ’22

Sergio Martinez ’21

William Mandelbaum ’22

Rachel S. Kim ’20

Rimsha Malik ’21

Sophia Bhalla ’19

Aidan O'Donnell ’20

Ares Alivisatos ’21

Eve Cooke ’22

Carter Zavitz ’21

Drew Limpasuvan ’21

Eric Velasquez ’21

Isabel Lewis ’22

Yihua Xie ’19

Rohit Narayanan ’22

Kimberly Hou ’22

Lily Rezai ’21

Yechen Hu ’22

Josephine de La Bruyere ’22

Jessica Ma ’21

Sarah Schneider ’20

Cathy Wu ’21

Devin Kilpatrick ’19

Stephanie Ward ’19

Tynan Gardner ’20

Paulo Kretteis ’22

Xichong Liu ’19

Jessica Pan ’21

Elizabeth Parker ’21

Andrew White ’22

Aisha Tahir ’21

Emily Kunkel ’19

Gabrielle Sudilovsky ’22

Kris Hristov ’21

Alexandra Koskosidis ’20

Alec Leng ’21

Jonathan Kelly ’20

Rohan Joshi ’21

Chase Lovgren ’21

Vedika Patwari ’21

Nicholas Schmeller ’21

Harry Fosbinder-Elkins ’20

Sean-Wyn Ng ’21

Chris Barkachi ’22

Daisy Torres ’22

Anna Yang ’21

Charlotte Root ’22

Barbara Gruszka ’20