Props to Nicole Capp

I just want to take a moment to give props to Nicole Capp from the Student Association.

Nicole recognized the great opportunity students have to get answers to questions about GW Housing -- when GWblogspot.com conducts a first-of-its-kind YouTube interview with GW Housing Director Seth Weinshel. She (with the help of
"Jaime") put GWblogspot.com on the front page of the SA website -- encouraging students to go to our site and type the questions they want asked to Seth.

After a long (and from what I can tell, successful) year as SA President, with SA transition less than 3 weeks away, it would be forgivable if an SA President were busy packing up boxes and writing up exit memos to her successor -- to the detriment of hyper-responsiveness. But that didn't happen.

On this blog, we've seen that opinions of the SA can be mixed -- and there's indeed plenty to critique with many GW institutions (EMeRG, The Hatchet, iHousing, The Hatchet, study abroad, The Hatchet - to name a few). And frankly, it can be a lot more fun to vent than to praise. But I did want to take a moment to say kudos for a job well done.

(Oh, and Rob Lockwood - we're watching you! You better live up to the high hopes that the bloggers of GWblogspot.com have in you to do good things in office!)

Calling All Students: What Are Your Questions for GW's Director of Housing Assignments?

If anyone was not already aware, I recently had a personal experience with the iHousing room assignment process that left me quite dissatisfied. To respond to my complaints, Seth Weinshel, the director of assignments for GW Housing Programs has graciously agreed to sit down for an interview with GWBlogspot.

To let everyone have some important background information, I have criticized GW Housing Programs in the past even before I had this issue. In February I chastised the department for what I perceived as a misinformation campaign as to why admissions tour guides no longer show Thurston Hall to prospective freshmen. I won't go into too much detail here so that you can read on your own, but I basically thought that there was a much more obvious reason that room prices were lowered for the huge dormitory with a not-so-savory reputation than Housing let on. Two weeks later, I followed up on the story with another post about some of the issues I've encountered in my own room such as the chronic mold in my bathroom. In this post I cautioned those prospective freshmen not to be seduced by those lower prices and showed why I thought they were lower than normal.

With my most recent experience, I did not receive the assignment I wanted. But more importantly, I noticed that I was part of a larger population that did not get what it desired. I've spoken with several of these people who are genuinely upset at not receiving their preference or not even receiving *any* housing assignment at all.

Having said that, I'd like to open the floor to the entire GW student body to ask questions to Mr. Weinshel. The interview, which will feature these questions as well as some of my own, will be taped and then put onto GWBlogspot after it is completed so that everyone may view it.

Some of the questions that I have for Seth include:

1. Is GW Housing Programs actively working to design a system that would grant a preferred assignment to more than 80% of the applicants that go through the system? (By "preferred assignment", I mean one of the top three preferences put on the iHousing application.)

2. What accounts for the seemingly huge waitlist for rising sophomores? How can this be alleviated so that people are not left without housing for upwards of potentially three weeks (as Housing Programs told a friend of mine that she would be without an assignment for this period of time).

3. Does GW Housing Programs think, in general, that a success rate of 80% is acceptable?

There are other issues with GW Housing Programs that others have expressed concern about on this blog. Around the time of my first post on the issue, Alex discusses the inability of Macintosh users to navigate the iHousing application.

In the past I have written on issues ranging from stress over the approaching final exams to my concerns over people who personify "trendy activism" to the difficulties in operating a student organization like GW Votes. Everyone is welcome to read my previous posts to see what and how I think.

But the main point is that now, the floor is open to all GW students to post questions for an upcoming interview with Seth. Please post these in the comment section so that I will be able to incorporate them into the interview along with some of my own.

Mad as hell: distilling the illusion of the beneficent, "second-to-none" iHousing system

Today is not exactly a great day. I'm sick, but more importantly, I'm angry at the University (surprisingly this hasn't become the normal status quo yet, I know).

In any case, I'm not sure as to how the racket at John Quincy Adams House operates, but I can sure tell you that I'm no fan of the iHousing process.

Regarding the process, GW offers a posturing, perfectly crafted public statement that is more at odds with reality than some of the statements recently uttered by our current President:

In our first year, 80% of students were assigned to one of their top three preferences and the process has made students' housing assignments easier, more flexible, and more individualized. GW's campus housing experience is second to none, contributing to overall student success, permitting greater opportunities for campus involvement, and offering safe and convenient services to residents.

First things first, let's note that the iHousing statement is on a different web site entirely from the Living@GW site, underscoring the utter mess of the entire department.

Now onto their asinine claims. Let's begin with the math.

I believe that the 80% figure is true, but I believe that that is by no means impressive. They have not even bothered to identify a base figure for the 80%, and so that leaves me to conjecture. But I will make an educated guess and say that it is based on the number of undergraduates who enrolled for the 2006-2007 academic year on all of the campuses (Foggy Bottom, Mount Vernon, Virginia). That figure is 10,032 according to the factsheet from GW's Office of Institutional Research. Understand that that number is essentially the amount of people who are currently sophomores on campus (it does NOT simply mean "all enrolled undergraduates"; rather, it means "those undergraduates that enrolled in the University beginning in Fall 2006).

So with that we can do some simple mathematical manipulations and figure out that if iHousing satisfied 80% of that population, then it also left some 2,006 people unhappy. That's two-thousand-and-six. How ironic! The number of people left out by the iHousing process in that year corresponds to the year of their enrollment. Perhaps that is an omen signaling that that figure will continue to grow.

Secondly, GW Housing really needs to get over this idea that "GW's campus housing experience is second to none, contributing to overall student success..." -- and what do they even mean by this exactly? What kind of success? Academic, personal, professional, what?

Let's contrast their lofty, highfalutin language with some that I found from a pretty reliable source: the Facebook status box.

Friend #1: is reaaally mad about FULBRIGHT...akh... (25 minutes ago)

Friend #2: 2109 F Street...? (46 minutes ago)

Friend #3: is pretty sure ihousing can go die now. (2 hours ago)

Friend #4: is pissed as hell that he's stuck in Potomac next year. (3 hours ago)

Friend #5: is homeless for next year, yet somehow still has more pressing issues consuming her time to even care! CHEERS!! (3 hours ago)

Friend #6: is WTF? WAITLIST?? Fuck you housing, we didn't get a dorm. Don't complain that you didn't get your top pick. (3 hours ago)

Friend #7: got screwed by housing. (5 hours ago)

Friend #8: is um ok wait no. Potomac House?! (5 hours ago)

Need I continue? Well, there is just one more, this time from a graduate student that I work with expressing his sentiments on the issue:

Colleague #1: is happy that he is not dealing with GW Housing like everyone else right now. (1 hour ago)

Looks like we're starting to see the iHousing fountain start to dole out discontent, dismay, and in some cases, possibly even distress.

In mine, it's somewhere between dismay and distress since I am fall into last year's 20% (which should theoretically remain at 20% this year if they have not changed their metrics since the number of enrolled students this year has only dropped by 174, and trust me, they have not changed their metrics given their buoyant and overflowing self-aggrandizement).

My top 7 preferences did not include 2109 F Street, but I suppose that that's perfectly acceptable to the folks over at JQA House.

Amazingly, more confusion ensued in my case. After receiving my assignment email (timestamped 8:06 AM), I received another one saying that I was on the waitlist but assuring me that I had no need to worry (timestamped 8:25 AM). In this email, some lovely representative of this most disorganized office wrote:

As a rising second-year student you are guaranteed housing and will be assigned to housing.

According to this I am now allowed to preference certain senior and junior housing options in my application...but I thought I already received an assignment (albeit an unsatisfactory one). So am I on the waitlist because my assignment was not in comportment with my preferences, or did they email me erroneously, or what?

To (hopefully) receive answers to these questions, I'm going to be visiting the wonderful JQA House (located next to Rice Hall, how fitting!) after my class ends today at 5pm (lucky for me that the housing office is open until 5:30). Updates to this will follow.

And for now, I will offer an explicit call to action: I would ask that everyone dissatisfied and upset with the way that the iHousing process has treated them email Seth Weinshel, director of assignments for GW Housing Programs and voice your grievances. I would advise against expecting a lengthy or well-thought out reply since I got an off-the-cuff and seemingly harried response when I emailed him for a Hatchet story I was researching. But this is not just me, as you can tell from the numbers and the real-time Facebook responses. So let's mount a campaign to get GW to conduct a comprehensive review of iHousing and to address the needs of students whose preferences have been totally neglected.

UPDATE: I visited GW Housing Programs today at 5:10pm to find that the second email was in fact erroneous. I was told that it should not have happened and to just disregard it. 

In other words, I'm just stuck with this now. *Sigh*.