This past week, I underwent one of the most stressful experiences during the whole of my first year at Kenyon: the housing lottery.
The housing lottery is despised by most of the student body, but by none more than the freshman class. Burdened with the worst numbers and the ability to watch the New Apartment of your dreams slip away on a Google spreadsheet, it is difficult to replicate the fear felt by first-years. Kenyon guarantees housing for all students, so this fear may seem misplaced—you’ll be living somewhere, after all. But when all of your friends are living South and you may be stuck on fourth floor Mather, the thought of guaranteed housing is hardly soothing.
My experience with the housing lottery was filled with stress from the very beginning. On the day that students were supposed to be emailed their lottery number, my inbox remained mysteriously empty. After a frantic conversation with Housing and Res Life that proved to be less than successful, I was convinced that I had somehow been expelled from Kenyon without being informed by the administration. However, my disappointing number eventually made its way to me with the explanation that it had been originally emailed to someone else by mistake.
My roommate and I made a list of possible housing before we had received our numbers, and we had concluded that Bushnell was the best outcome we could possibly hope for. My roommate’s number ended up being unbelievably good, which opened up housing opportunities we had previously thought unthinkable: the New Apartments, Leonard, Old Kenyon. Our exceptional number made our experience admittedly much less stressful than that of classmates who may have had higher (and therefore worse) numbers, but we made the mistake of getting attached to one room in particular. We obsessively refreshed the Google spreadsheet to make sure our room was still available, and it remained open until just an hour before we were supposed to make our decision. Suddenly, everything became hurried as we quickly debated the merits of other rooms and ultimately came to a decision as we were waiting in line in Gund Commons for our number to be called.
My future home
The lottery ended up going well for my roommate and me—we got a room on the third floor of Old K!—but I realize that there are others, both rising sophomores and upperclassmen, who feel betrayed by the system. As outdated and arbitrary as the system may feel, I do think that it’s the fairest system that the College could use. I know that the fact that I received a good number in this year’s lottery might make me biased, but I could always receive a bad number in future years and end up just as disappointed as others were this year. The housing lottery is randomized and there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever get a good number. As frustrating as this is, I think this also makes it the fairest process available. The only potential way to change it would be to create a weighted system where those with higher GPAs, less academic infractions, or were undertaking honors were given higher preference in the lottery, but that has its own set of potential issues as well.
Although the housing lottery was extremely stressful and I’m definitely not looking forward to going through it again next year, I think it’s the best system we could have in place. My major takeaway from my experience this year is not to get too attached to any one specific place; with a lottery system, it’s not realistic to have expectations that specific. However, we made it, Kenyon! Here’s to another year of not thinking about the lottery before obsessively worrying about it during the two weeks leading up to it.
Image Credit: Nicko Margolies, Brokelyn