Here at Keene State College, as a whole, the student population is very easy going, and hard to get upset or riled up (in a negative way) about many issues. However, last week, a process got the classes that are required to live on campus almost pulling their collective hair out.
This process was the housing selection for next year. This year, instead of having a table or area set up, the housing was run through MyKSC, similar to class selection.
Despite the program attempting to make it easier on students, I believe the process was more fluid and easier to understand with the previous method of selection.
Now, because the process is new, there are obviously expected glitches and misunderstandings with it, and this article is not to bash the process and suggest it will never be efficient.
This article is meant to provide some feedback from someone who had to go through the process firsthand, and possesses some ideas as to what could be changed.
For example, many people had no clue at all that the people you selected a few weeks before picking rooms, your “Potential Roommates,” was a set in stone selection.
Personally, (and I know this sentiment was shared with many of my friends) I believed that once the time for actual room selection came around, I would be able to modify this selection, which was not indeed the case. Once you selected your potential roommates, you were locked into only living with them, and couldn’t change it at all.
This came as a huge shock to everyone that I spoke to it, and if this system is to continue, there needs to be far more information about that step of the process. It also ruined some of the plans that developed, as the housing process loomed closer.
People who were trying to guarantee living with friends were trying to change their housing, only to find that they couldn’t change the form once it was submitted. This was an extremely common problem within the freshmen class, and threw a lot more people on the wait list for housing than would have been necessary.
The rules about how you may not change your potential roommates after submission should be more clearly conveyed to people to avoid the disappointment and hassle of the wait list for people that need not be on it.
Another common issue people had was with not discerning that the rooms were set up with some for males and some for females. Personally, when I was selecting the housing I thought that there was a mistake with the system because I was seeing empty rooms on the system and was unable to select them. Only later on did a friend and I realize what the set up was, because he was having the same issue.
There needs to be a more clearly displayed set of rules for the set up of the rooms so people don’t become frustrated and believe their computer is having issues with the system. That’s what the whole batch of issues with the system comes down to, a lack of communication.
The parameters need to be explained more clearly to the people using the system, which will save both the students and the housing administration a lot of work in the long run.
Dave Padrazo can be contacted at
dpadrazo@keene-equinox.com