The Office of Student Development is producing a new World Wide Web page in anticipation of this year's housing selection process, which will begin Sunday, March 2.
The site, which already offers an online version of the housing guide, campus maps, a complete listing of Central Campus apartments and a list of frequently asked questions, will also soon include a room locator and a roommate finder, said Bill Burig, assistant dean of student development, in order to assist students with the new selection process.
Under the new system, students will no longer be assigned to a particular dormitory as in the past. Instead, they will be able to select a room from among those still available on campus at their designated room-pick time.
One of the most significant features available on the web site will be the room locator, a database of every room on campus that students will be able to search using factors such as gender, room type, location and the presence of air conditioning.
"In the past, we didn't have the opportunity to let people know which rooms were designated male or female, or single, double or triple until they went to their room picks," Burig said. Once the changes are made to the web site, students will be able to access such information through the room locator.
The roommate finder will be essentially a bulletin board for students who are looking for a roommate, said Trinity junior Jay Kamm, who along with Peter Brauer, data processing specialist for the Office of Student Development, has been designing the page for the last four months.
Interested students will be able to log on to the finder and provide basic information such as their class and gender as well as brief comments about themselves or their roommate preferences. Their anonymous entries will be added to the bulletin board, which can be searched by other students who have also placed advertisements. Using their spring registration personal identification numbers, they can later log onto the system to read other students' responses to their entries and send their own responses.
Officials have also worked on the site's housing survey, which Burig said will be shorter this year than in previous years. "I'll be shocked if anyone takes longer than five minutes to fill out the survey this year," Burig said.
The new survey will ask students which lottery they wish to enter, whether they want a single, double or triple, the name of their preferred roommate (if applicable) and five brief questions pertaining to personal items such as smoking habits and music preferences. Students entering the lottery will not be asked to rank dormitories or quads, nor express a preference for air conditioning, as such choices can be made in April at the time of room picks.
Once room picks begin, a database of available rooms will also be accessible from the web page. This information will be updated almost immediately once a room is taken and, as a result, becomes unavailable.
"Students are strongly encouraged to review that information before they come to the Crowell Building for room picks," Burig said.
In addition to the changes in content, the housing computer system has been significantly upgraded due to its inability last year to handle efficiently the demands being placed on it.
"We have a brand new, top-of-the-line server which is three times as fast as the old one," Brauer said, adding that the system will also be running new, upgraded network software and will have five times as much RAM as last year.
Burig said his only misgiving about the new page is its appearance, which he said may be viewed by students as "boring."
Still, he said, "it's the content that's important. Our priority is that students be able to get the information they need. We'll try to jazz it up in the future."
The address of the new site is http://www.stuaff.duke.edu/housing97/.
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