The next time students select their on−campus housing, it will not be in Cousens Gym, or any other campus building for that matter. Students will instead be able to participate in the housing lottery via a new online system.
The housing lottery system will first be used in the coming fall by students studying abroad selecting spring semester housing.
According to the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) Director Yolanda King, the decision to move to an online housing lottery has been in the works for a while.
"The decision came from feedback from the student body a few years ago and we are now in a place where can do it," King said in an e−mail. "We are excited for this to be happening for students."
A major advantage of moving to the online system is the elimination of the proxy system for students abroad, who currently must appoint another student to pick rooms for them, according to King.
"It will … permit students who are abroad to more directly participate in selecting their rooms and not relying solely on our proxy system," she told the Daily.
Additionally, students under the new lottery system will be able to access a customized view of available rooms based on their class year, the type of room they are looking for or the building they wish to live in, according to James Moodie, the associate bursar of systems and programs.
StarRez and StarNet Systems, an Australia−based software development firm specializing in telecommunications management and the management of residential living facilities in various colleges and universities, will be creating and running the system.
The selection process for choosing a vendor for the lottery system began almost three years ago, according to Moodie. He explained that StarRez emerged as the final choice as it was the only company that could tailor its system to Tufts' housing lottery.
"The university had to go through a lot of hoops to find a system that could handle our system. We have a very unique approach to the lottery system," Moodie said.
He noted that the administration felt retaining the current lottery procedures should be a high priority.
"[The administration] had just gone through a fairly long examination of our lottery process and came up with a solution with input from the students that included the reciprocity and advance notification [in the current lottery system]," Moodie said. "To have that system in place and then change it so soon would be unfair to the people relying on that system."
Staff members in Student Services and the Student Information Services (SIS) Technology Team have been working with StarRez to replicate the Tufts housing selection process online as accurately as possible, according to King.
One aspect of the lottery that the online system will be able to accommodate is group applications, like those for suites in Wren and Sophia Gordon Halls.
Moodie explained that students will apply as a group and be provided with an exclusive time to pick their room or suite based on the average of their lottery numbers.
This same timed system will apply for the larger lottery. Depending on the size of the lottery, that exclusive time window may vary.
Moodie compared it to the current system for class registration. "If you fail to pick within your time, the next round could pick," he said. "It's fairly analogous to Web registration."
The StarRez system will also perform functions beyond facilitating the housing lottery. It will be used for judicial matters and to administer roommate questionnaires for incoming freshmen, according to Moodie.
"From an administration standpoint, it will have far more robust reporting," he said. "We'll be able to host a questionnaire that matches students based on 12 different music preferences as opposed to now just asking the question, ‘Do you like music or not?' Hopefully, we can tailor [the system] so people are getting better roommate matches."
With regards to judicial affairs, ResLife Assistant Director of Community and Judicial Affairs Carrie Ales−Rich said the new centralized system will improve tracking and reporting of student offenses.
"StarRez will allow all incidents … to be ‘housed' in one central location as well as any other information pertaining to each incident," she said in an e−mail. "This will cut down on the amount of paper files … We will have the ability to create various reports to better keep track of the kind of behavior occurring on campus."
Ales−Rich added that the online system will facilitate improved communication. "Anyone managing a specific case will be able to send out all correspondences through the system ensuring consistency among the different case managers," she said.
Moodie pointed out that the online system, beyond providing improved services, will save a lot of manpower.
"Normally, we take away the gym for three days … there's a lot of staffing involved to basically set up an office in the gym and have Student Services' and Yolanda's staff," he said. "We ask our students to sit in a gym for an hour or so. Hopefully, this will expand our level of service and reduce stress for everyone involved."
The decision to eliminate the physical lottery system is part of larger goal to eventually replace SIS with a more modern system.
"There is university information that exists on the SIS system that you are familiar with, but it also handles housing and billing," Moodie said. "This is something that the university eventually wants to replace. They are slowly moving functionality off SIS to a newer system."
King added that StarRez was a popular choice in the industry. "They are well known in terms of other housing departments at other schools," she told the Daily.
Other institutions of higher learning currently using StarRez for their residential living facilities include Harvard University, Boston College and University of California, Berkeley.
