SA Community Life Committee

November 10, 2008

Present: Andrew, Brittany, Nikhil Kumar, Ali Austerlitz, Tony Miller, Emily Cusick, Karen Brown (Campus Life), Julie (Campus Life), Lauren Nadler

Presentation by Campus Life regarding Housing Lottery

1. Upcoming events Notify Housing by Nov. 20/Dec. 1 if going abroad Send out important dates card to all student mailboxes, but not to off-campus students → students who live off campus and want to participate in lottery go at the very end of the housing lottery process. How do we let everyone know about this?
   • Utilize internal SA opt-in list serve
   • Contact first-year parents? Focus on student communication.
   • G-Whiz-style bathroom mailers
   • Include piece about off-campus restrictions in Orientation materials, housing booklet, etc.?
2. 99.7% of first year/transfer students live on campus; about half stay sophomore year and about half of those stay junior year.
3. Making sure that students who want to participate understand how to do so is a primary concern:
   • Ads in the Sun for open houses, etc.
4. Online demos
   • Students want to see floor plans before the lottery — homeland security advises universities not to post floor plans on the website. Can’t we have Kerberos-protected passwords and access the floor plans before the actual lottery?
5. Working with RAs?
6. In-house lottery for Collegetown not an option because of need to guarantee housing to large sophomore and transfer class. But once numbers stabilize and we can better grasp patterns of continued occupancy, maybe it will be an option.
7. Expo/open house: info sessions during that will focus more on mechanics on housing lottery and strategizing on how to block effectively, etc.
8. Housing lottery brochures go out to on-campus mailboxes during second semester.
9. Main housing website will have link to pointers and possibly screen shots of housing lottery process.
10. Interactive online forum for questions about housing on Campus Life forum, SA forum, RSC forum, etc.? Moderated by staff and students; submit questions and search for other replies, etc. — on Facebook?
11. Feedback on housing lottery, brochure, etc. — email Nikhil changes and he will pass them along.

Next meeting: sustainability in the dorms?

RSC conducted surveys in the high rises regarding putting swipe cards outside each door.