Abigail Hebert

As next week’s housing lottery approaches, certain staff members at the Office of Residential Life (ResLife) will undergo a different process than that of previous years. Until this year, ResLife would reserve three Harpswell Apartments units and two Park Row Apartments units for rising seniors who are returning ResLife staff, but the Office is discontinuing this practice this year.

The reserved units were allotted through an internal lottery consisting of eligible senior staff. Associate Director of Residential Life SJ Tinker explained this process and the reasoning behind it.

“We would set aside [the units] for ResLife staff to be sure that we had RAs present in the area, and we would do an internal mini lottery among all of the rising seniors who were eligible on the ResLife staff to fill those spots,” Tinker said.

This process has been discontinued for this upcoming academic year’s housing lottery, and rising senior staff members will instead go through the general housing lottery. The core issue of the internal lottery, Tinker reported, was that rising senior staff who were not successful in getting one of the five units in Park Row Apartments or Harpswell Apartments often resigned from their positions to take part in the general lottery in hopes for another attempt at these two popular senior housing options. As a result, Tinker said ResLife was losing valuable senior staff.

“We want students to have the housing and residential experience that they want, so no hard feelings ever. And oftentimes those students did land in really desirable housing, but other times they landed exactly where we might have placed them anyway, such as a Chamberlain quad or a [Coles] Tower apartment or Pine Street Apartments,” Tinker said. “So we were seeing that happen, and we were wishing that we could retain those staff, especially if they were going to end up in housing that, had they known that’s where they would land, they may not have taken themselves out of the ResLife process.”

This year’s new process will allow eligible rising seniors who are returning staff to go through the general housing lottery, possessing what are now called “RA lottery positions.” The previously reserved Harpswell and Park Row Apartments will be dispersed back into the general housing lottery. The normal lottery point system and rules will all apply to the ResLife staff taking part in the process. Wherever the students land in the lottery is where they will be an RA.

This new process is intended as a trial run to assess what ResLife wants to continue doing regarding housing selection for senior RAs in the future. Tinker expressed some of the office’s hopes and worries regarding this new process.

“We’ve looked at the statistics, and we think that hopefully we land with some ResLife staff in Harpswell Apartments and Park Row. Obviously, there could be implications for us if nobody gets it, and of course, if everyone ends up there, then there will be much outcry about how the lottery is rigged. And I can say very clearly and honestly that we don’t rig the lottery in any way,” Tinker said.

After this process concludes for the upcoming academic year, ResLife will evaluate how it went and amend its process from there.

“Now, with the updates, I’m hoping that it’s more equitable. I mean, to be totally clear, one of our main priorities is retaining excellent staff … [and] from a clarity, transparency, equity lens, we think this will help. And when we evaluate and we see what happened, and we’re wrong, then we’ll go back to the whole process, or create a new one,” Tinker said.