Despite large Class of 2016, no shortage in upperclass housing

With three rooms remaining in upperclass housing for the Class of 2016 one day before the official end of junior upperclass room draw, at least 103 students had yet to draw into a room.Most of these students will have to place into the housing draw wait list.

However, these numbers are not uncommon.

"Every year we typically have between 100-120 juniors on the wait list,"Manager of Undergraduate Housing Angela Hodgeman wrote in an email, obtained by The Daily Princetonian, to 309 juniors who had yet to draw into a room as of 9 a.m. on Wednesday.

The Class of 2016 was unusually large, a consequence of a larger-than-expected yield, and caused issues for the University, which was forced to find new housing spaces.The third floor of Wilcox was converted into dorm rooms in the fall of 2012to accommodate more students. Additional recreational and study rooms in Forbes and Whitman were converted into dorm rooms in order to make 51 more beds available.

However, the impact of the Class of 2016 on upperclass housing seems to have been minimal and numbers are consisted with years past. Last year, 99 students in the Class of 2015 were waitlisted for upperclass housing, according to an email Hodgeman sent to those students then.

“This is very normal for rooms to run out on the thirdday of junior draw. Every year we typically have between 100-120 juniors on the wait list,” Hodgeman added in her Wednesday morning email.

Hodgeman declined to be interviewed for this article. Mike Caddell, a University spokesman, was unavailable for comment on Wednesday evening.

But although the shortage of rooms may be a recurrent event every year, Undergraduate Housing’s response to it have drawn mixed reactions from members of the class of 2016.

Katie Glockner ’16, who drew with five other students, had planned on getting two triples, but the group noticed right before their draw time that there was only one triple available.

“It was not a smooth process,” Glockner said about deciding which rooms her group would draw into. She explained that after realizing there was only one triple left, she knew that four of the members in her group would end up in a quad, and she and the last member might have to turn to the wait list.

“We had a couple of contingency plans. We had to decide whether we would be waitlisted, and 10 minutes before draw time, we knew we had to make a gamble because there was no way we would get what we wanted,” she said. “We thought that if we were on the wait list, there might be a chance that we would be together.”

However, she ultimately drew into the last triple with another girl who was higher in the room draw but is studying abroad in the fall.

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Glockner said the Undergraduate Housing Office could make the room draw process smoother by being clearer about how the wait list actually works as well as what to do in situations where students will be studying abroad.

“Trying to figure out what to do without knowing what would happen was just tough and confusing,” she said. “It could have been easier if we had more of an understanding of the process.”

Some members of the class of 2016 turned to other measures during draw time. Jay Park ’16 was the last student on the upperclassman draw list, but opted to draw into a room in Butler.

Park is a staff copy editor for The Daily Princetonian.

“I don’t think any changes to rooms would affect students too much,” Park said.