Housing selections for rising juniors and seniors are coming to a close, allowing students to prepare for their future living situations at Keene State.
Director of Transitions and Community Living Casey Justice said, “So far things have been running smoothly, we had the application out for a little over three weeks for students to get those applications submitted – we basically told everyone whether you are planning to go through the selection on Friday, Oct. 25, or Friday, Nov. 1 to just get the application in – all you have to do is submit.”
Justice continued, detailing the flexibility of roommate selection, “You are always able to go back in and make changes to the roommate preferences which I think is helpful, and they also have to mutually agree and say, ‘Yes, if someone gets an earlier selection time than me then I want to get pulled into that process.’”
Community living remains available to students in need of assistance.
“We’re in person so [Housing Operations staff Karen Whittemore], and a couple of the community directors will be over here and so we’ll have people that are monitoring the emails in the order that they come in, we’ll have availability to answer calls, and of course if students walk-in,” Justice says.
She continued, “Oftentimes it’s helpful if a student brings their laptop so then we can just be like, ‘Oh, just do this.’”
Justice said Community Living works to create the easiest possible process for students; however, the unpredictable nature of students’ residency preferences continues to be a complication.
“I think it’s a pretty easy process, I think what happens is everybody kind of has an idea of the one housing selection that they want and that’s their main focus, and any given year we don’t know what the top commodity is gonna be – a lot of times students will ask us, ‘What’s going to go first?’ and we never know until the selection actually happens, because even if you list roommates it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what you’re gonna go in with.”
“We will always work with students,” she concluded.
The notion of the application process being an easy one is seemingly shared between staff and students alike.
Sophomore Katie Van Dyke spoke about her experience with housing selection in the past, “Last year went perfectly – one of our friends had one of the earliest selection times so we all got to live with each other this year.”
She continued, “This year the only problems we ran into were on our end, which is definitely frustrating, but at least we don’t feel wronged by community living or anything like that.”
Another student, junior Evan Marchand, shared a similar sentiment to Van Dyke, stating “I would say the process is fairly organized.”
Touching on the possible shortcomings associated with the housing selection system, Marchand said, “Times are staggered but it’s not very guaranteed that you’re gonna get an early time or a late time so you might get screwed over with housing that way.”
Sophomore Christopher Montagano, shared similar concerns around the unpredictable nature of the housing process, saying, “I think, inevitably, the whole process can seem unfair at times. You build this idea in your head around what your living situation will be, especially when it’s surrounded by friends, that when it doesn’t exactly pan out that way you have to take a step back and re-evaluate – a little ‘welcome back to earth’ moment.”
Parker Bartlett can be contacted at
pbartlett@kscequinox.com
