Keene State College first-year students will soon find out where they will live for the next academic year through a randomly generated housing lottery.

Assistant Director of Residential Life for Housing Debra Barrett said, to be eligible for the lottery, students must be planning to live on campus during the 2018-2019 academic year and have 51 or fewer credits completed by the end of the spring 2018 semester. In order to participate, Barrett said sophomores need to fill out a sophomore roommate selection application. This will allow students to go online to select roommates and create groups between people that they want to live with Barrett said. She added this process allows students to make changes for who they want to live with and where they want to live. Barrett said students can make changes all the way up to selection day during the first week of March.

LaURA ROMaNIELLO / Art director

Barrett said the randomness of the lottery works well because it is fair for everybody. “It is not by grade point average or anything like that,” Barrett said.

First-year Morgan Gilman said she likes the housing lottery process. “I like how it takes place later in the year because it gives us time to pick our roommates and meet people. We get used to the campus and that Pondside looks one way and Butler looks another,” Gilman said.

Gilman said she feels prepared for the housing lottery, the process has been organized and it is not confusing. The Residential Life Office gives students a set day and time to enter the lottery.

Barrett said the reason KSC waits until March to complete the housing lottery is to give students time to make connections with their peers and get a feel for what KSC is like. “The second semester is past the initial drop off for when students don’t remain at KSC so that is why we don’t want to have it earlier in the school year. It also gives them more time to build relationships,” Barrett said.

First year Bianca Assenza said she has a disability and could’ve had priority housing if she chose to. “The priority housing is a good thing because it would allow me to live in a place that is accomadible to my disability,” Assenza said.

Despite having the opportunity for priority housing, Assenza said she decided not to take the priority housing and instead take part in the housing lottery because if she had chosen priority housing, they would’ve put her in either Owls Nest or Holloway and she doesn’t want to live in either of those places. Assenza said if she had chosen to live in a priority housing spot she would’ve also been able to choose friends to live in that spot as well and secure that spot.

According to the KSC Residential Life Office webpage, after the online housing selection, there is a $300 non-refundable security deposit for each student who will be living on campus. Then, students sign an online housing agreement contract as well as one for meal plans. After that, students have secured their housing according to the webpage.

Colby Dudal can be contacted at cdudal@kscequinox.com