Last Friday, the Department of Community Living proposed two changes to the University’s housing lottery system in an email to students, which would break up class year-specific housing quads and offering better housing lottery numbers to students loyal to campus housing. A survey will be sent to the student body today so that they can provide feedback on these proposals and suggest new ways of improving the housing lottery. If the student body shows approval of the proposals in the survey, the policies would be put into effect for this semester’s upcoming housing lottery.

The first proposal would eliminate class year-specific housing for upperclassmen, in a system DCL calls “Pooled Upperclassmen Housing.” While first-year students would still be confined to Massell and North Quads, sophomores, juniors and seniors would all be able to live in East Quad, Rosenthal Quad, Usen Castle, the Charles River Apartments, Ziv Quad, 567 South Street, Ridgewood A and Village A. Seniors would have access to “senior only housing” in the Foster Mods, as well as Ridgewoods B and C.

Under this system, the sophomore class would be guaranteed certain beds across each of the campus’ living options and, should they choose a suite living option, could pull in juniors and seniors. A sophomore pulled into someone else’s housing would abdicate their reserved bed to another sophomore and, eventually, to the general housing applicants.

The second proposal calls for a “Housing Loyalty Program,” in which students who have chosen to live on-campus throughout their time at Brandeis would receive higher numbers in the housing lottery. Students who apply for on-campus housing after having lived off campus would in turn receive lower numbers. Transfer students, midyears and students studying abroad would remain in the housing loyalty program, even though they spent a semester or more off campus.

In an interview with the Justice, Director of Community Living Tim Touchette explained that DCL developed the proposals because students criticize the housing lottery every year. He said that the recent decision to demolish Usen Castle had no influence in DCL’s decision to propose these plans.

When asked what problem the plans aimed to solve, Touchette said, “The funny thing is — and we actually heard this in the focus groups — I don’t really think there is a problem. But what we want to do … [is] make sure that our processes are as innovative and cutting edge as possible. I’d love to be able to do something that Brandeis is then known for, and we can kind of be industry-leading in what we’re doing.”

DCL began developing the proposals through student focus groups, according to Touchette. “We did some focus groups and some student lunches where we asked students of any class year to come in,” Touchette said of DCL’s drafting process. “So we had a couple of ideas. We didn’t really have anything solid. The groups actually came up with these options.” About 10 students were involved in the focus groups, according to Touchette.

Two other proposals that DCL considered that were eventually cut were a “squatter’s rights” policy, in which a student could choose to remain in their housing option from the previous year, and a policy where students requesting a suite could average their individual lottery numbers rather than relying on one number to pull in the others. The “squatter’s rights” policy was cut due to its own reliance on the Pooled Upperclassmen Housing policy being instituted, and the averaged lottery numbers were cut due to massive unpopularity among students.

After completing the focus groups, DCL contacted Student Union President Nyah Macklin ’16, according to Touchette, who in turn connected Touchette to Senior and Junior Representatives to the Board of Trustees Grady Ward ’16 and Emily Conrad ’17. Conrad told the Justice in an interview that the Student Union’s role was primarily to “refine, along with others, the proposals so the student body could provide input.” The Union also helped distribute the information to the student body, and wrote up a document explaining the changes and providing some pros and cons to each, which were included in the email.

Conrad told the Justice that the Union and DCL have already begun to receive feedback: “Obviously we’ve been hearing some things like ‘oh, this would be a better suggestion,’ or ‘this is going to cause this problem,’ so if there are ways that we get positive feedback, where 80, 90 percent of the student body is like ‘we like this, but we want X, Y, and Z to change about it,’ we could change it.” She emphasized that no policies will change until they receive wide support from the student body.

The document sent to students lists greater selections of housing options for upperclassmen as a pro of pooling upperclassmen housing, but lists as a con that traditions of moving around campus with one’s year would be lost and sophomore-only communities would be lost. Meanwhile, the document lists encouraging students to remain in on-campus housing as a pro of the loyalty program but says that the program could also create “an institutional manifestation” of the divide between students who live on and off campus by making it harder to regain campus housing. Additionally, the program could divide students between those who can afford on-campus housing and those who cannot, according to the document.

Conrad said of this division, “This is something that has been worked on through financial aid, something they’re taking into account and we believe that, according to the administration, the disparity [between students who could and couldn’t afford on-campus housing] was greater in the past. But we still know that it exists, and that there’s no way to really control the entire disparity between when some people are paying [hypothetically] $550 a month and some people are paying [hypothetically] $1,200 a month.”

She added, though, that “there are definitely also differences which I think the first proposal addressed in certain ways, which is that Ridgewood is much more expensive than East. Currently, Juniors and seniors don’t really have as many options for cheaper housing on campus.”

Touchette noted that students would never be in a situation, whether under the loyalty program or not, wherein they cannot access on-campus housing solely due to the number of beds on campus. “There never is a point in the process where someone doesn’t get housing. What happens is people don’t like what we have when it comes time for them to be able to pick. So it’s an important distinction, because inherently we’re able to help everyone no matter what number they have.”

According to Touchette, the University theoretically has enough housing to accommodate the entire student body, but doing so would require upperclassmen to live in underclassmen housing. Additionally, Touchette emphasized that beds guaranteed to sophomores which are not filled would be put back into the general lottery. “So those along with cancellations, withdrawals, academic dismissals, all those beds are then available. So we work with anyone that’s still waiting for a number. If you get a lottery number, you’re going to get housing. It’s just a matter of if you like what’s available. If you actively choose to go off campus at that point, then yes, you would be in the non-loyalty pool of lottery numbers.” Touchette noted that DCL predicts it will have enough beds to accommodate students leaving Usen Castle after Fall 2016, the last semester that the building will be open.

Though the email about the proposed changes was sent by the Department of Students and Enrollment, Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel clarified his minor role in the creation of the proposals in an email to the Justice, saying the majority of the work was done by DCL and the Union. Touchette reaffirmed this, saying that Flagel’s role was primarily helping to draft and distribute the email.

“Overall, however, I am very glad to see the materials distributed. Whether or not any changes are made, the housing selection process should be regularly reviewed and considered by our students,” Flagel wrote. “Shifting the power from the administration to decision making by our student community on this issue increases transparency and appropriately gives our students ownership of a process that directly impacts you.”