the Informer

Room Selection 2010 is fast approaching and will take place next Saturday, April 10 in the Konover Great Room.

If you have been paying any attention to your Hartford e-mail account, weekly updates from the Office of Residential Life have been flooding student inboxes.

For students to be eligible for on-campus housing in the fall, they must register as full-time students for the fall 2010 semester, have their $250 room reservation deposit paid, and have the appropriate housing status numbers (1 or 2).

Students who have not paid their room deposits yet still have until Friday, April 9 to make their deposit to the Student Administrative Services Center.

According to the Office of Residential Life, some changes have been made to the process this year based on feedback from students from previous years.

A new feature of the process this year is Group Room Selection. There are two ways to enter Room Selection with a group: either as a full group or a partial group.
A “full” group must fill an entire apartment or suite and the number of individuals in this type of group depends on the type of housing looking to be obtained. Full groups seeking housing in Regents Park or Park River would be four people and in the Village would be four or six people.

A partial group consists of one or two people who cannot fill an entire suite or apartment but can fill a room. Students seeking to do the process this way need to select apartments or rooms that are partially filled.

Students have received a Room Selection number in their Hartford e-mail accounts. Those entering alone enter at the time that correlates with their number. In order to enter as a group, the group must average their numbers together and enter at the averaged time.

The Office of Residential Life staff will be checking students’ numbers to ensure that they are entering at the proper time. No student will be allowed to enter Selection early.
During Room Selection, students will not put holds on specific rooms but will be able to choose from all available rooms and sign up for them.

The Office of Residential Life encourages students to have back-up room preferences because some rooms and apartments may be filled by the time their priority number comes up. In Park River, for example, rooms quickly fill up as it is the “most sought-after housing.” According to the Room Selection 2010 Booklet, spots are filled in this building within the first two hours, and it only houses 248 students.

Also, many returning students wish to live in singles. This demand is hard to satisfy because of limited occupancy—many that want singles will not be able to get them.

There is alternative housing, however, at the Temple Street Townhouses. These facilities offer premium housing in a private, gated community located only 10-15 minutes away from campus.

There are 42 fully furnished townhouses, each with four or five bedrooms, and two or 2.5 baths over three levels. There is also an on-site parking garage and community lounge.

Town Hall meetings have been held over the past two months on campus for students interested in this preferred living. Beginning at 5 p.m., representatives from the Temple Street Townhouses will also be at Room Selection. More information is available at their Web site, www.templestreettownhouses.com.

The Office of Residential Life warns that it is very possible that all students who come to Room Selection may not be housed on that day. During the 2009 Room Selection, approximately 120 students who went through the process at the end of the night did not end up with housing. In the event of that happening this year, students will be placed on a Priority Waiting List. The database for placing students will be utilized as vacancies occur. Students must be present at Room Selection to be placed on the list. Students who do not attend Room Selection, or leave before their time, will not be placed on this list.

Residential Life provided every student who was placed on the waiting list last year with on-campus housing by the summer.

Should a student be unable to attend Room Selection, they can proxy, or have a friend represent their interests. To do this, the student must print out a Proxy Form from the Residential Life Web site and fill it out completely, and have their friend attend Room Selection at their designated time.

The Office of Residential Life urges students to review the Room Selection 2010 Booklet which has all of this and more important information vital for students to know about on-campus housing next semester. The booklet can be accessed from the office’s Web site at uhaweb.hartford.edu/reslife/forms/roomselectionforms10. Students can also speak to their Resident Assistants or their area’s Resident Director if they have any questions about the process.