Posted Thursday, Aug. 4, 11:59 a.m. When sophomore Jeremy Makover returned to his Ivory Tower quad this summer after a trip, he expected to see his one roommate who had been with him since the beginning of the summer.
Makover said he was surprised to find that he had two new students living in the room, because he had heard nothing about extra roommates from the University.
“I go to Atlantic City (N.J.) with a friend, and I come back to find two complete strangers in my room,” Makover said. “My original roommate is great, but now a lot of the comfort and extra space I had expected from summer housing is gone.”
In addition to being upset over a lack of notification, he was also bothered by the fact that other rooms seemed to be empty while his was filled to capacity.
“Why do summer room assignments have to be so random?” Makover said.
Makover, along with other residents, are frustrated by the University’s policy of not notifying summer housing occupants of new roommates. The Community Living and Learning Center, which oversees on-campus housing, has a system to inform students of roommates moving into a room during the school year, but not during the summer.
“Students living in summer housing are advised that they will be leasing one bed and one desk in a room, and to be prepared to receive a roommate later in the summer,” said director of campus housing Seth Weinshel.
Some students said they feel the University should have an alert system in place to make the summer move-in process easier for students.
“My roommate is really cool and we have a lot of fun together, but the moving situation was bizarre, having no prior notice of her arrival,” said junior Gina Fernandes, whose roommate moved into her double in the Aston nearly three weeks after she did.
Weinshel said that the University has not installed a summer notification system because there is no apparent demand for it. He added that the software program used to organize summer housing differs from the program that organizes housing during the rest of the year, and a technology upgrade would be required to notify students of incoming summer roommates.
“CLLC would definitely look into enacting a notification system if we received enough student feedback,” Weinshel said. “We’ve used the same summer housing system for the last four years now, and there really hasn’t been a call for that type of change.”