The Brown & White

With the housing lottery finally complete, many of Lehigh's rising sophomores are very upset with the lack of available housing.

The housing lottery hasn't always been the be-all-end-all for Lehigh sophomores. It was only in 2004 that Lehigh made the decision to mandate all sophomores to live on campus.

Some students can (and do) attempt to avoid the housing lottery all together by deciding to live in special interest housing or by joining a fraternity or sorority.

While these students may genuinely be interested in options such as the ROTC or UMOJA houses, or Greek life, it does pose the concern that students may be using the options as ways to simply cop out of the lottery.

But most students just gave in to Lehigh's lottery system and received numbers, hoping they (or someone in their group of friends) would get lucky.

Unfortunately, many didn't.

Among the disappointed sophomores are eight females students who will be placed in Smiley and Thornburg houses, freshmen dormitories located within Upper Centennials that will most likely be occupied by all men, other than those eight sophomore women.

For unlucky students such as these women, it is possible their quality of life could be negatively impacted by this placement. Living in the Centennials as a freshman, you may be secluded from students in The Quad and in McClintic-Marshall House but you are at least surrounded by many other freshman dorms. Students living in Thornburg and Smiley houses as sophomores will be separated by gender and age along with distance from other upperclassmen housing.

And so the lottery systems shortcomings come to light.

One being, while there is virtually no difference between the student who draws the No. 1 lottery pick and the student who draws No. 400, there is a huge difference between living in Brodhead, which has suite-style rooms, a gym and a dining hall, and being squeezed into a freshmen dorm.

If Lehigh is going to continue to require its students to live on campus, they should provide adequate housing for each student.

This doesn't simply mean having enough beds to accommodate them, but having an established standard of living that all upperclassmen housing must meet.

Many schools use the random assignment system for their housing lottery. However, other schools factor grade point averages into the lottery system. Schools such as Gettysburg College determine students' lottery numbers by GPA and Sacred Heart University allows students with certain grade point averages to apply for specialty housing.

While using grade point average to determine housing lottery numbers can give students incentive to study harder, there is much debate over whether it is a fair system.

Problems with using grade point average often occur because of the discrepancies between different majors.

Lehigh needs to come up with a new system to determine housing, especially for the sophomore class.

Whether they build or renovate dormitories, design a formula using information such as a student's grade point average and involvement in clubs and athletics to determine lottery number, or simply allow sophomores to move off campus, students need to be sure that they will receive adequate housing through a fair and balanced process.