The chaos that was room selection last year left plenty of room for improvement this year. A positive for the students is that the University recognizes that there are problems and has taken some steps to try to eliminate the headaches.

Reducing the deposit is a good start. This makes the residence halls more accessible to students who might be strapped for cash in the spring.

Reducing the number of triple rooms was another improvement. Very few people can find a way to get along with two strangers in cramped quarters for an entire year. It was simply unfair that one student in each triple was forced to leave his or her desk in the common area.

The real test of these improvements will come in April during general room selection. The difficulty there will be in placing groups that cannot fill suites. Inevitably, there will be students who cannot live in the room that they had hoped to.

One of the problems is that students cannot live in whichever building they choose. They are restricted by the number of credits they have. While this allows upperclassmen to avoid freshmen, it also means that friends will have to split up because they are not the same age.

The information packet that describes the process could be made more clear. Last year, many students went to room selection thinking that they understood what was going on, only to discover that things were not as they originally thought.

Students’ room situations will affect their academic standing as well as their overall happiness. It is important that the University do all it can to make sure that resident students feel safe and are contented with their living situations.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

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Though we’ve had an extremely mild winter, The TORCH office feels more like a summer on the equator. The fact is that the heat in the U.C. is up way too high. We open all the windows, and still can’t seem to cool off. It would be greatly appreciated if maintenance could do something to make conditions more manageable in our office.