On March 7, I found out that I had won the lottery.
I was one of 800 victors out of thousands of players and was, needless to say, ecstatic. However, in this game of chance, I wasn’t playing the Mega Money or the Fantasy 5 for the jackpot. The prize for me is a bed.
And unlike the Florida lotto, there is a chance my award will be revoked. At number 572, I should be able to select my room on the third day of sign-ups, but if people on the first and second days bring in their buddies as roommates, then I might just be out of luck. It’s possible that my number will be pushed back and my chance eliminated.
No housing would be bad news for me. I live in Orlando, which is three hours away. My family, like most others, has hit hard financial times recently and is unable to pay expensive living fees. An apartment in Boca Raton — are you kidding me? As a 4.0 student, I rely on financial aid to help me pay for housing. So, right now I really have my fingers crossed.
Freshman Candace Brewer is another like me. Her number is 485, which is in the upper range of the “lucky numbers,” just like mine. So if all of the students with numbers one through 400 pull in roommates, that would be 800 people with beds and would mean that Candace and I will not be sleeping comfortably.
“I’d be really upset if I wasn’t given a room,” says Brewer, an English major and a resident of Tampa Bay. “Then I would start worrying about finding an apartment and a roommate along with the rest of the FAU student body.”
Others aren’t even lucky enough to be in the top 800. Junior Ann-Marie Badard has number 2,081, which means she is unlikely to have a room at the end of this process. The problem is, she is blind and depends on campus housing — her disabilities prevent her from commuting to school.
“I love FAU, and I really want to stay here,” says Badard, a social work major. “It would be a shame if I didn’t get housing, because I’d have to leave.”
FAU doesn’t plan on telling the so-called “lottery winners” that they’ve lost
their chances.
My talks with Jill Eckardt, the director of Housing, and Larry Faerman, the assistant director of Housing, produced no predictions about how this is all going to work out, not only for me, but for the rest of the students.
We must remember that this is their first year using a lottery system, too. It is as new to the Housing officials as it is to us.
Eckardt believes that since only 65 to 70 percent of freshmen return to FAU for a second year, there will be no problem housing most of the students who really need it. She guesses that out of the first 250 lottery numbers, between 75 and 90 will take a bed. But remember, this is just a guess.
“The most important thing to remember,” Eckardt says, “is that we really want you to be serious about coming back in August.”
Oh, these students are serious, all right. Why else would they be doing all they can to get housing, even if it means cheating the system?
Students are paying off their friends who might not return to FAU but have really good numbers. Those friends sign up for housing, pull their returning friends in and then quit, leaving the person with the larger lottery number in a really good housing situation. I say, if it gets you a room, why not do it?
This lottery system is too random. It attempts to make the process fair for all but in doing so has made it very unfair for certain folks. I really think that more factors should be taken into account when assigning housing, like grades, behavior and, to a further extent, course load.
Applying for housing will certainly be a game of chance this year. Who will win and who will lose, I couldn’t tell you. So many upperclassmen have placed stakes in FAU and are now feeling a little irked to be missing out on their payouts. I just hope I get lucky.
Old Housing Selection Process:
Students were able to hand-pick their housing assignments, beginning with seniors. The upperclassmen were given the choice to “squat” and keep the same room.
New Housing Selection Process:
Preference will be given to incoming freshmen who are required to live on campus. All of Glades Park Towers, Heritage Park Towers and most of Indian River Towers will be devoted to freshmen. Housing available to returning students is limited to Algonquin Hall, the Village Apartments and 200 beds in Indian River Towers.
The lottery system is a random process that assigns a number to every returning student. Preference is given to returning sophomore students who live outside a 50-mile radius of the school. The lower a student’s number, the sooner that student gets to apply for housing. Each student may select one roommate with whom to apply. The student with the lower number may pull his or her roommate in to apply on a sooner date. Once the 800 allotted beds are filled, the selection process is over.
For more information, contact the Housing department at (561) 297-2880 or [email protected].
