Room Draw
Right now, everybody is talking about room draw. I don’t know how it works at other colleges, but everyone at Princeton is guaranteed housing and obtains it through a lottery system called Room Draw. You can draw by yourself or you can draw in groups, and your draw is scheduled based on what year you are in.
I guess it’s first necessary to explain the way the residential system works at Princeton. There are six residential colleges: Rockefeller (Rocky), Mathey, Butler, Whitman, Wilson, and Forbes. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages (location, dining halls, dorm quality, etc). Each college is scattered around campus and is composed of a couple buildings, and you live in within that college for your first two years. After that, you have the option of going into Upper Class housing or staying at your residential college.
To be honest, I got fucked by Princeton because I got assigned to Butler. The one good thing is that I have a single in a practically new dorm (Bloomberg Hall, after NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg’s daughter), but the good ends there.
- I’m practically the only male on my floor. While superficially this may seem like something to be excited about, it’s not like I’m interesting in meeting girls. And also, guys need that stupid masculine companionship to stay sane.
- Half of this floor consists of an annoying sophomore clique that doesn’t seem to know when to be quiet.
- All my friends live in Rocky, on the opposite end of campus.
- My work also takes place in Rocky, and I have to walk back and forth there everyday.
- Our dining hall is the worst on campus.
Now, there actually is a second perk. Butler is under construction right now, and there will be four new buildings to live in next year. I’m guaranteed to get in one. It seems like I’m going to be living in a single again next year - I’m not that sad about it because I’ve gotten accustomed to the privacy. Also, I think I’m impossible to live with (I operate on Californian Hawaiian time).
So as everyone right now is discussing their room draw, what group they want to draw with, and where they want to draw into, I’ve been sitting here loling at the name of one of the new dorms I may live in next year.
Wilf Hall.
Wilf. Are you serious?
