UVM should improve housing selection

My experience with sophomore room selection at UVM was mediocre and anxiety-inducing.

I was only basing my decision off the Halls page on the UVM ResLife website, which provides no interior photos at all; not even a floor map.

Nobody would rent or buy a house without seeing pictures of the inside first, and the same should apply to college dorms.

UVM should provide pictures of every room type in every hall to give students an idea of the layout.

My roommate and I decided to live together again next year and chose to be suitemates with two of our friends.

Upon filling out the room selection form for next year, we decided the L/L suites were the superior option.

They were new and situated close to Central campus, right next to the Marché and Skinny Pancake.

Most of the details we received about our future dorm were obtained through conversations with people who previously lived in similar suites. This intel got passed through the grapevine, like a game of telephone.

When the day came to pick our suites, the leader of each pair of roommates was assigned a timeslot in which to pick a room. The suitemates we wanted in our dorm had a later sign up time than we did.

This meant my roommate and I needed to rush during room selection to find a fully vacant suite and hope no one else would pick the same suite for the hour between our timeslot and our desired suitemates’ timeslot.

We got lucky and the four of us are going to be suitemates next year.

However, this isn’t the case for everyone. Plenty of friend groups were completely broken up because of the room selection system.

UVM needs to guarantee friends stay together. Allowing people to group as a suite instead of just with a roommate would be a great start.

The University of Connecticut, is a great example of a college that gives its students adequate information for room selection.

The UConn East Campus residential life website has floor plans, interior photographs and pictures of the laundry room, according to UConn’s Residential Life page.

There’s no logical reason why UVM can’t make these offerings as well.

Pictures of rooms and suites are vital for people to plan ahead and know where they will sleep every night for eight months.

College is already stressful enough. Being left in the dark about housing adds unnecessary tension.