Residential Life is changing some ways in which Room Draw is conducted this year in hopes of making the process more convenient for students.

Last year, Residential Life gave students a brief survey as they left Room Draw to ask them for feedback.

“The big thing we took from the feedback that we really wanted to change was that we wanted the apartments to be a separate process,” said Interim Director of Residential Life Craig Beebe.

According to Beebe, the Carrollton Hall apartments are the most popular rooms on campus and to make the rooming process easier, they will now have their own Room Draw Mar. 11 and 12. Applications for the Carrollton Hall apartments are due on Mar. 5 and all other residence hall applications are due Mar. 17 at 5 p.m. in the Residential Life office.

The apartments caused problems for groups that didn’t get in last year. Groups that applied for an apartment and didn’t get one had to drop a person in order to find a new room, since apartments are available for groups of five, but other rooms are available for groups of four or less. This left many in rooms they didn’t want to be in, with people they didn’t know.

This problem inspired another change in the Room Draw process. Room Draw socials will be held in the residence hall lobbies Mar. 9 for students seeking roommates.

“We want to create more opportunities this year for students to meet each other ahead of time so that they don’t have to go through Room Draw as an individual if they don’t want to,” Beebe said.

In addition, this year’s Room Draw will have the first upperclassmen learning community. A Wellness floor will be starting on the Carrollton Hall’s second floor. Students living on the Wellness Floor will be held to a standard of no smoking, drinking or drug use.

“They will have a contract to sign that they will live by all these expectations,” said Donna Adams, the area director of Carrollton Hall. “If they don’t abide by those expectations they will be removed from that area.”

Ashleigh White, history freshman, liked the idea of upper classmen communities.

“It’ll make it easier for us to get good rooms,” White said.

Political science sophomore Rachel Sayers has mixed feelings on the upperclassman communities.

“I like the idea of wellness, but it might create complications if you have a roommate that doesn’t want to live there,” she said. “I feel like the learning communities are a freshman experience. Once you get to be an upperclassman you don’t need them anymore.”

Sam Winstrom can be reached at [email protected]