Room draw and social justice: a modest proposal

March 4 was an important day for me; it marked the last time I will throw myself upon the mercy of Adam Rockman. Turning in my draw application that snowy Tuesday, I once again consigned myself to that bizarrely random lottery of lodging, that great Sorting Hat of housing, the ancient and peculiar practice of Room Draw.

I imagine it as follows: We students carefully choose our most compatible companions, faithfully fill out our forms and trek down to the housing office (hereafter, the Temple) to meekly offer our future unto its denizens. This group of clerics, led by High-Priest Adam Rockman, then loyally mulls and processes our vital statistics before entering them into the heart of Room Draw, the beast itself, the all-mighty System. Feeding off our social security numbers and surnames, the System grows and churns, gnashing them with digital teeth and rending them with virtual claws. For over a fortnight, the Temple groans and shakes, belching forth black smoke. And then, on the 17th day, the System finally returns to slumber and the priests emerge bearing the fatefully ordered list to Frist. There, nailing it upon the door, they allow the gathering students to behold its wisdom and finality. The System has spoken; all that remains is to obey.

For some, the ruling is kind (Edwards); for others, cruel (the Slums). Yet most everyone is satisfied that, in the random roulette of Room Draw, we all have had an equal chance at the 250 sq. ft. single as well as the 100 sq. ft. double.

Or have we? I am not one to complain, but for some reason I have fallen into a zone of arithmetic anomaly that defies everything I was taught in Statistics. Consider the facts: Freshman year I was assigned to the third floor of the Forbes addition, a cold prison of cinder blocks where the oppressive florescent lights slowly suck away one's will to live. Sophomore year my draw time of 1:30 was able to land me a smallish double — adequate, but a far cry from palaces I had seen in the New Wing and Clapp. But things really became interesting junior year, when my draw time was so abysmally low I was put on the dreaded Wait List. Returning in the fall, I found myself not in some Gothic masterpiece but in a strange land know as the Hibben/Magie apartments.

Nestled on the shores of scenic Lake Carnegie, Hibben/Magie has since the mid-1960s (to judge by its "architecture") provided housing to graduate students, faculty and their children. Last September, it came to host five woeful undergraduates who, 20 minutes from Frist, were beginning to learn the true value of their bicycles. While I have grown accustomed to the icy walks home at night and the screaming babies next door, a part of me cannot help but curse the System and all its minions for exiling me to this foreign hell.

In light of these experiences, my proposal will seem most modest. In a society that values Law and Justice, it is abhorrent that Princetonians should be made to suffer the random ravages of the System. Operating behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, it is clear that reasonable beings would order society more fairly, ensuring that pain and suffering, while perhaps inevitable, are not unduly focused on certain members of the community. I thus propose a system whereby the recipients of the bottom quarter of draw times one year are automatically given the top quarter of draw times the following year. Under such an arrangement those students forced into broom closets one year would be compensated with penthouses the next. The majority of students in the middle would have cause for neither complaint nor bragging. It would not be possible to have the top draw time each year, but nor would it be possible to have the bottom. Room quality would be more fairly distributed over all, promoting social harmony.

I hope administrators will look with pity on my experience and enact this simple reform. It is too late for me, but perhaps future classes can be spared the depredations of chance, and Princeton can become a slightly more just community. In the meantime I feverously await the crucial list, hoping that this time, for once, the System will favor me. But even if I am not posted at the head of the list, I still have this bit of solace: at least it can't get any worse. (Right?)