In the latest installment of the Duke housing saga, the Office of Residence Life and Housing Services has announced that it will likely not have enough beds to accommodate all of the students seeking on-campus housing in Spring 2004. To create space, current juniors are being offered the opportunity to enter a lottery to be released from their Spring housing contracts. Given the situation, the lottery is the best option available to housing officials. However, the lottery is a short-term fix to a long-term problem, and the University should start building a cushion into its room assignments for future semesters.
The current housing crunch is the result of a combination of factors, some within the University's control, and some outside. Each Spring semester, housing officials must estimate the number of students who will request housing upon returning from abroad, take leaves of absence, withdraw from school, graduate early, go abroad or move off-campus. It is impossible to project these figures perfectly. In addition, the turbulence of world affairs has made the status of abroad programs even more uncertain than usual.
Despite these constraints, a good deal of the housing shortage is the University's doing. By moving all sophomores to West and instituting a mandatory three-year on-campus living requirement for students who matriculated in the Fall of 2001 or later, Duke has overbooked itself.
The junior lottery is an equitable solution to this year's problem, but it does come with several caveats. Students who are granted a release will not be notified until Nov. 10, which, despite a pledge by housing officials to provide assistance, leaves little time to find off-campus housing and work out the dynamics of a lease. Further, the University should make sure to state how living off-campus in the Spring will affect members of fraternities and selective houses. Duke requires that selective members live in their sections for a minimum of teo years. If their sections are full and students enter the lottery and live off-campus next semester, that should count towards their two years.
While the three-year on-campus requirement will continue to keep bed-space at a premium, the rule does more good than harm to students. By requiring that students live on-campus for three years, the school is guaranteed the revenue necessary to grant most students four years of on-campus housing, a major selling point not available at many peer institutions. Some students will be displaced, as will be evidenced in the Spring, but the majority of individuals will get rooms.
The junior lottery will alleviate the pressure on the housing system in the Spring, and is a great opportunity for students who want to live outside of Duke. But, officials should start planning for the inevitable future housing crunches immediately.
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