For the first time ever, housing selection took place online this year, using a program called MyHousing. Although some issues came up during room selection, according to Assistant Director for Operations at the Department of Community Living Sarah Hogan-Crowley, the process went "about 90 percent smoothly."

Hogan-Crowley said in an interview that there were no issues with sophomore room selection. However, she said that during the upperclassman room selection, for about 20 minutes on Sunday afternoon there was "a connectivity issue." Students were receiving an error message, which eventually disappeared, according to Hogan-Crowley.

She said that although DCL got in touch with the company to catch the error messages, the company did not find any. Therefore, DCL is still unsure about what caused the error.

Hogan-Crowley said that although she has not received a lot of feedback about the new online system, she thinks that overall, the process "was less stressful because you didn't have to go and stand in line and you didn't have to be somewhere at a certain time."

However, she said that students had more questions about the process because this year was the first time that the new system was used, "but we were here and we answered questions and I think everyone got through it OK," she said.

"I thought it was a little confusing but once I figured it out with some of my friends I was like, 'Oh, I have no issue with that,'" said Alex Landau '17, a student who used the new program along with all other University students who opted to select on-campus housing, in an interview with the Justice.

According to Hogan-Crowley, the major questions that DCL received were regarding changing group sizes in order to see different options. In addition, she said that on Sunday morning, DCL found that if students had one unmatched person in their group, the website wouldn't let them see any options.

For an individual to be matched, all students within the housing group had to accept that person's request. "The nice thing is, we have the ability to sort of step in and see what they say, and we can say, 'Oh, you've got someone unmatched in your group and you've got to take care of that.'" DCL then posted a message on its website, which seemed to clear matters up, said Hogan-Crowley.

Hogan-Crowley said that she would like to work with MyHousing on how the matching works. "They're upgrading the product right now, so maybe with the upgrade we'll have more flexibility, but I would like to see the system be more flexible so that students get in and sort of automatically know what their options are rather than having to adjust group sizes, because I think that slowed some folks down," she said.

According to Hogan-Crowley, DCL had updates running on its website, but said that "it wasn't quite real-time."

"I think that it would be much better if they made it so you could log in in the morning, see what rooms are available and then watch as they leave the page," said Annie Abrams '17, another student who used MyHousing in order to select housing, in an interview with the Justice.

Using the new software, the DCL was able to oversee exactly when and at what numbers housing options ran out.

All housing ran out at number 1770 this year, according to data provided by Hogan-Crowley. In the past eight years, housing has run out at numbers between about 1400 and 2100. In 2012, housing ran out at number 1501, according to DCL's website.

This year, the order of housing selection followed the historic trend, with underclassmen filling Usen Castle suites first, by number 57, and upperclassmen filling four-person Ridgewood Quad suites first, by number 1047.

Hogan-Crowley said that she was surprised about the order in which some of the housing options were claimed. Hogan-Crowley said that there was one six-person Foster Mod that "hung on forever," and that "the sophomores chose a little bit differently than we normally expect."

When asked if the online housing process could have affected the late claim of the six-person Mod, Hogan-Crowley said that she thought the secrecy that online housing allows for could have caused this occurrence.

"If they didn't tell folks what their number was, it was all kind of quiet, so you could just go and take a single somewhere and not feel pressured to take in a whole suite because maybe you didn't want to live in the Mods," she said.

According to Hogan-Crowley, in previous years, the Mods ran out right after Ridgewood suites.

-Tate Herbert and Hannah Wulkan contributed reporting