The Office of Housing and Resident Life has increased the required priority points needed for the room selection process.
Beginning this year, students are now required to have 27 priority points to be pulled into a room by someone with a higher point total. Students who wish to retain the room they are currently living in must have 29 points.
"We upped the priority points level for room retain and roommate pull in because students have demonstrated amazing growth in the area of priority points over this year," Cheryl Janus, director of HRL, said. "Every couple of years or so we raise it up a little bit."
Last year, the point total for retaining a room was 27 and roommate pull-in was 25, with the average student earning 26 points.
"We raised it because the students have really shown that the priority points system really works," Janus said. "It gets students more involved, more motivated to do well academically, keeps them out of the judicial system and really improves life on campus as a whole."
Another addition to the system involves those who hope to reside in Ora Manor.
In addition to room retain and roommate pull-in, groups of students who can fill an entire apartment in Ora will have the opportunity to select and reserve their room before open room selection in April.
"We did that to encourage more community down in Ora," Janus said.
The priority points system is based on the individual student's campus life. Students can earn a maximum of 40 points, broken down into four different categories: academics, judicial, campus involvement and HRL involvement. The most points a student can earn in a given category is 10.
Points are deducted for a poor judicial record both in residence halls and in the classroom. Furthermore, the more clubs one is actively involved in and the higher one's grades, the better the point total will be.
We've seen the average number of priority points grow throughout the years," Janus said. "Every year we've had to bump it up in order to keep students working harder and raising the bar. I don't think it would be very fair if every student was able to retain their room, or every student was able to pull-in a roommate."
Last week's housing application deadline saw 1,211 students apply, which is more than the amount of rooms available.
However, according to Janus, this is an annual occurrence that happens at every school.
"Two or three years ago, we had a pretty long wait list after room selection," she said. "Students situations change throughout the semester and summer. At that point we had a 500 person wait list, and we had everyone placed before the start of the semester."
Over the next two weeks, HRL will calculate all eligible students' priority points. Those students who have correctly filled out the housing application will receive their totals via email on March 14.
Room selection will occur throughout the month of April.
Tim LeCras can be reached at timothy.lecras@student.shu.edu.
