Apartment housing deadlines at the University of Richmond need to be revised to provide for more flexibility. As a rising senior at UR, I have noticed that the on-campus apartments are something many students plan for since their freshman year.
Housing placement is based upon a lottery system. Before obtaining a time slot for apartments, rising seniors must log onto StarRez and accept roommate requests. This is a key step in the process of receiving an on-campus apartment. I learned this the hard way. Two of my roommates failed to accept my roommate requests because they were away on spring break and did not have access to their emails. This left my entire apartment without a time slot.
When my roommates and I went to the housing office in the hopes of fixing this issue, the employees said there was little they could do to help.
The roommate-acceptance deadline is over spring break, when many students have to focus on midterms or are traveling with limited email access. The deadline should therefore be moved to a more convenient time, either before or after spring break.
There is an aura of a privilege around living in apartments because it is only for upperclassmen, and some students wait three to four years for their turn to live in them.
As the oldest students on campus, seniors are people underclassmen look up to. Ever since my freshman year, I have always wanted to live in the apartments because of previous seniors who told me about the great memories they shared and the closeness they felt with their grade.
The strict deadline rules implemented by the housing department need more leeway.
The university needs to lighten up on its strict deadline rules for apartment selection for rising seniors. Though there was a mistake made on my part, the housing system is flawed in making the roommate-acceptance deadline so central to the housing process and leaving little flexibility in this one minimal step in the overall housing process
Because it will be their last year of college, rising seniors should be allowed to access their desired on-campus housing before entering the dreaded real world. With more wisely chosen deadlines and less rigidity concerning the inconsequential portions of the housing process, more seniors could obtain their desired housing and enjoy their final year at the university.
Contact contributor Kate Breed at katherine.breed@richmond.edu.
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