Hi Everyone!

I wanted to share an update on where we are with Spring housing assignments.

Roommate Pairs:

We are happy (and honestly, a bit surprised!) to say that the graduate student release opened up a lot of opportunities for undergraduate roommate pairs to be placed together.  Right now, we think the majority of pairs who applied will be placed together.

Pretty much every opportunity for a pair to be placed together is on Central Campus - all apartment sizes are possibilities (studio, 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom, 2-bedroom suite, and 3-bedroom).

About half of the available opportunities are in 3-bedroom (4-person) apartments.  These apartments have two small single rooms that share a bathroom and one larger double room that has its own bathroom.  Floor plans are available on our website.

Instead of just randomly placing pairs together in these apartments, we are looking for sets of roommate pairs who want to live together (think of it as a block of four in one apartment).   If you are interested, please have one person from each roommate pair email Housing Accommodations with the names of the four students who want to be placed together.  We will hold off on assigning these apartments for a week so that you have a chance to get in touch with your friends and pair up. If you have friends who originally wanted a single or weren’t in a pair, they can also join you in these apartments - they should email us with the names of the four people who are trying to live together.  You need four people to fill these apartments.

We will use these requests to make assignments in conjunction with the applications you previously submitted.

Singles:

Demand for singles is, as is usually the case, higher than supply.  Right now, fewer than half of the students requesting singles will likely get them.  We recommend that students seeking singles consider using the roommate finder to see if there is someone who has a vacancy in their room with whom you’d wish to live.  If there isn’t a single available for you when we are doing placement, we will use your listed preferences to place you as best we can with a roommate.  You may also want to try to get together with three other students in a 3-bedroom (4-person) apartment – details above.

Assignment Timeline:

We will be sending out the results of reassignments around Thanksgiving.  This information comes out early so students who are moving may be prepared to do so in December.

Assignments for students returning from abroad or leave of absence will go out in early-to-mid December.  Experience has shown that the longer we wait, the greater the chance we will be able to meet your preferences as more students cancel their housing.  We appreciate your patience!

Please let us know if you have any questions!
Jen

Off-Campus Lottery Results:

The results of the off-campus lottery were emailed to students yesterday (10/13) at 5pm.  At that time, 258 students were released (exactly half male, half female).  Just under 10% of the released students currently live on-campus; the remainder are abroad for Fall 2009.  The only students not released were those who were ineligible for the lottery.

If you were released and later decide you want to be on-campus, you will be placed at the end of the assignment process.  We will still guarantee you a space on-campus, but it is very unlikely that your preferences will be met.

We will continue to review late requests from eligible students on a case-by-case basis. If you are still interested in release, submit your application on the lottery form. (You can ignore the dates on the form.)  We will respond to applications on a rolling basis.

Projected Availability for Spring:

Reviewing the current projected demand for housing for Spring and the projected cancellations, we anticipate having enough space for students seeking housing.  Please keep in mind that the available beds may not allow for roommate pairs to be placed together or for students to receive their preferred room size or location.

Four-Person Apartments: As you may be aware, we offered graduate students the opportunity to cancel their Spring licenses in order to make more space available for undergraduate roommate pairs.  As a result, we have a few three-bedroom (four-person) apartments available.  We originally did not anticipate having any of these available.

Roommate pairs: The options for roommate pairs are somewhat improved, but still scarce.  To give you some perspective, we currently project approximately two-dozen roommate pairs being placed together in empty apartments or rooms (which is about double what we expected before we did the graduate student release).  We expect approximately 260 housing applications.  We can’t really predict how many of those applications will be from roommate pairs, since that varies widely from year to year, but it is likely that only 1/4 to 1/3 of preferred roommate pairs will be placed together.

If you are filling a confirmed vacancy in a room with a preferred roommate, we guarantee placement together.  The above projections are specifically for roommate pairs looking to move together or be placed together in an empty room or apartment.

Singles: We are getting a lot of questions about singles.  Every year, singles open up as seniors graduate early or juniors go abroad.  Yes, there will be singles available, but no, we really can’t predict your chances of getting one.

Indicating Preferences on the Application: Another common question is “What should I indicate as my preferences if I want to live with my friend but I would prefer a single if we can’t live together?” (or vice versa).  The application has ten spaces to list your preferences, in order, as well as an “other information” box.  Believe it or not, we read through all of the applications before we begin placement, so make use of the “other information” box.  Be true to your preferences and list them in order. Use the box to make it clear if your priority is to get a single or if your priority is to live with a friend.  Just keep in mind that we can’t guarantee your preferences will be met, but it is much more likely they will be if you explain them clearly than if you assume we know what you want!

Hopefully some of you found that helpful - please contact us if you have questions about the process, and remember that applications are due October 31.

Good Luck!

Jen

Hi Everyone!

We have some exciting progress updates about Central Campus.  As you may know, RLHS and other University offices have been working to enhance the facilities on Central Campus.  Projects that are currently in the works include:

• The tennis court is being repurposed and resurfaced with turf for use by intramural teams and other students.
• The basketball court is being resurfaced.
• The laundry room at 208 Alexander is being renovated and expanded to include a study room and new e-print station.  The building will also be used to sample new finishes for the exteriors of the rest of Central Campus.
• Uncle Harry’s is moving to the “mill village” area.  The mill village is the series of buildings on Anderson between the bus stop and the intersection with Yearby.
• The original Uncle Harry’s building is being renovated into a pub/food service venue.
• A recreation space is being installed in the mill village.  It will have a few machines (ellipticals, treadmills, and a universal machine) and a space for stretching, etc.

Progress is already being made on many of these projects.  We hope to have some of them done by opening and during the Fall semester.  We appreciate your patience!

We get a lot of questions this time of year about lofts.  We strongly encourage you to wait until you have seen your room before choosing to rent or purchase a loft.  While the floor plans that float around in Facebook may give you some sense of the room’s layout, keep in mind that many of our buildings have architectural features that will make loft placement tricky.  (FYI - we do not make floor plans available for safety reasons.  The plans that some groups have posted in Facebook are old and may not be accurate.)
Before making any decisions, review the loft policy.  You’ll see that RLHS offers a lofting option that may meet your needs, or you may decide that working with one of our approved vendors is your best option.  Just remember, all lofts must be obtained through an approved vendor or RLHS.  Other structures are not approved and you may face judicial action for having them in your room.

Several updates from OIT that we want to share with you…

Telephone Service in Student Rooms and Apartments

Duke’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) has informed RLHS that normal telephone services (ability to call the room or make outgoing calls) will not be available in university residences.

You can, however, plug your own phone into the phone jack in your room/apartment to dial “911″ and connect directly to the Duke University Police Department (DUPD).

Cell Phone Coverage in University Residences

All campus residences have cell phone coverage, however, the university only assures coverage for cell phones with services provided by Verizon or AT&T. Students with other cell phone plans may wish to consider getting a plan through one of these two companies.

Data Connectivity in Duke Residences

Students have increasingly utilized wireless connections to access the university’s computing system. In fact, less than 5% of students are connecting to the system using the data ports in their rooms.

All university residences have wireless coverage.

To make better use of the equipment required to support data connections across campus, there will be only one wired port in your room/apartment this coming year. If you and your roommate find that you need more than one wired port, the university’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) will activate a second port. Second ports not used for a 30-day period will be deactivated.

Please go to the OIT website for additional information regarding these services:  http://www.oit.duke.edu/

Hi Everyone,

We get a lot of questions this time of year about how lottery numbers are generated.  Here’s the basic process:

1. Data clean-up - fix mismatched roommate pairs, blocks, etc.
2. Assign a 6-digit random number to each “unit” in the lottery.  (An individual person trying for a single is a “unit,” a pair trying for a double is a “unit,” a block is a “unit,” etc.)
3. Look at each type of lottery (singles, triples, doubles/apartments) and sort the units based on seniority and then the 6-digit random number.
4. Start counting down the list of people - so, within the singles lottery, the person with the highest seniority and the lowest 6-digit number gets lottery number 1, etc.
5. For the online-processes, take small batches of people of each gender (so, for singles, take the first 10 men and the first 10 women) and assign them to a lottery “group.”

This year things got even more complicated.  For Substance Free and East Meets West we had a few more steps.  First, we counted how many of each room type is available, by gender.  We then took the applicants (sorted by seniority and the 6-digit random number) and stared counting people to spaces.  So, if there were ten male singles in an area, the first ten men were given lottery numbers for the area.  The remaining men were put back into the general lottery (or had a chance at another area, if they had applied for multiple).  In agreement with Campus Council’s recommendations, these areas were kept to ~40% senior/junior and ~60% sophomore.  So it is possible that juniors who wanted an area did not get it while sophomores did.  In the end, students who get a lottery number for one of these areas are guaranteed to be able to pick within them.

Picking online:  Substance Free, East Meets West, singles, triples, rising sophomore doubles.

Picking in-person: Rising senior and junior doubles/apartments.

Students who are selecting online received a lottery “group” number.  Lottery groups have ~10-12 people of each gender in them (so 20-24 people total, but only 12 people that you need to be worried about).  We use 12 as the upper limit due to single gender blocks of 12.  Lottery numbers and group numbers correspond to specific selection times.  We will post the selection schedule early next week.

Groups for Substance Free begin with #101.  Groups for East Meets West begin with #201.  Groups for triples begin with #301 (each triple group only has one roommate set of each gender in each group).  Groups for singles begin with #401.  Groups for rising sophomore doubles begin with #601.

Students who are selecting in-person received an individual number (each person in a pair or in a block has a number). Pairs/blocks will have consecutive lottery numbers.  Male numbers begin with M1-D, female numbers begin with F1-D.  The D just denotes that the number is for the doubles/apartment in-person lottery.

Hi Everyone,

As part of the Central Campus renewal project, we are reviewing opportunities to reconfigure the interiors of apartments.  We hope to create more apartments where each student will be able to have their own bedroom.

In anticipation of this project, 301 Oregon (twelve 2-bedroom suites) will not be available during RoomPicks 2009.  If the proposed renovations are approved, this building will be offline for the summer and fall, and will reopen in Spring 2010.  If the renovations are not approved or are scheduled for later in the project, we will allow students to request reassignment to 301 Oregon as part of the upperclass reassignments process over the summer.

We are excited about the opportunity to update our apartment offerings and appreciate your patience and cooperation as the Central Campus renewal project continues!

Since we have gotten a few questions about this…

Depending on your class year and where you currently live, when you log-in you will see some or all of the following options:

• Squat my Central Campus apartment (aka Return to Same)
• Squat in your preferred roommate’s Central Campus Apartment
• I am not blocking
• I am blocking
• I decline housing

You will select ONE of these options.  You will then get a drop down box that includes the remainder of the application information you need to submit, based on the option you chose.  As applicable, these drop downs will have spaces to indicate that you are interested in Sophomores on Central, East Meets West, and Substance Free.

If you want to live on West Campus in a single, double, or triple and are not blocking, select “I am not Blocking.”

If you want to live on West Campus and are blocking, select “I am blocking.”

If you want to live on Central Campus, are not blocking, and are not squatting an apartment, select “I am not blocking.” Select “double” for your room occupancy, and then check “Central Campus” below.
If you want to live on Central Campus, are blocking, and are not squatting an apartment, select “I am blocking.”

If you want to live in a 4-person apartment on Central Campus, select “I am blocking.”  You will need to be in a block of at least 4 people.  You will NOT indicate anything on the application about wanting a 4-person apartment.  Select “double” in the room occupancy dropdown and then check “Central Campus” below.

If you plan to live in your preferred roommate’s current Central Campus apartment, select “Squat in your preferred roommate’s Central Campus Apartment.”

If you plan to live in your own current apartment again, select “Squat my Central Campus apartment (aka Return to Same).”

Please let us know if you still have questions, and good luck!

Hi Everyone,

The room/apartment locator will be available on March 2nd.  Until then, here are some VERY ROUGH numbers to help you get a sense of what will be available during unaffiliated RoomPicks 2009.  The numbers below are how many rooms/apartments are available, as opposed to how many bedspaces. These numbers include the beds that may be used for Sophomores on Central, Substance Free, and East Meets West, since these areas are considered unaffiliated.  You may review the floor plans and the Central Campus map to get a sense of how the different room sizes are distributed.