The Parents Office and the Office of Housing, Meal Plan, and ID Card Services are collaborating to host a housing lottery overview and virtual open forum for parents and guardians Wednesday night.

Eileen Simmons, director of Housing, Meal Plan, and ID Card Services, said the forum will educate parents on the housing lottery process and what students can expect.

Simmons, who will be a panelist at the forum, said an important part of the housing lottery process for students is creating a detailed plan for where and with whom they want to live next year. She said she hopes this forum will get parents involved in that plan.

“It doesn’t have to be difficult,” Simmons said of the housing lottery. “But if you wait until the last minute to make a plan, you’re going to have a problem.”

Changes to this year’s housing lottery will also be discussed at the forum.

After last year’s housing lottery, the Office of Housing, Meal Plan and ID Card Services collaborated with the research office to conduct a student survey, Simmons said. She added that a main takeaway from the survey was that students fulfilling their two-year on-campus housing requirement felt that there weren’t enough options on main campus for them.

This year, in order to open more spaces, students who have fulfilled their two-year requirement but still wish to live on campus will be limited to Washington Arms, South Campus and singles in every hall except freshman buildings. Prior to this change, they were able to live in all styles of rooms in all halls.

“I think there’s just enough changes with the lottery this year that the more we can get out there and let students know the better,” Simmons said.

Simmons said that another important part of the web forum will be reminding parents to pay the advance housing payment that’s due in March.

“Every year we’ll inevitably have a dad call the day after missing the payment deadline saying ‘I ruined my daughter’s life,’” Simmons said.

Rebecca Dennis, a senior social work major, said that she didn’t really run into any problems with the housing lottery, but she knew people who did.

“Some of my friends had problems because they didn’t pay their housing deposit,” Dennis said. “Since they didn’t pay the deposit, they weren’t allowed to participate in the lottery.”

Dennis said the consistent emails sent out by the university about the housing lottery are helpful to students participating, but she suggested that residential advisers could also help freshmen with the process so they know exactly how to handle it.

Maya Parthasarathy, a junior newspaper and online journalism and political science dual major, said the housing lottery “wasn’t really hard to figure out, my roommates and I just didn’t have very good numbers.”

“MySlice is an irritating site to deal with so they could improve that to make it easier for students,” Parthasarathy said.

Published on February 25, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Sara: smswann@syr.edu | @saramswann