On Feb. 18, Director of Residential Life Seffie Tringet sent out an email to the campus announcing that the College would be making changes to its student housing process for the 2018-2019 school year.
In her email, Tringet explained that a notoriously difficult problem for her office to deal with has been unhoused students, and therefore, the process for housing such students has undergone a complete overhaul.
In the past, unhoused students remained unsure of their residence halls for several months following the initial housing process. The Office of Residential Life has taken steps to rectify this situation, and in the new system, students with the lowest 20 lottery numbers in each year will be assigned to a certain residence hall within a month of the initial housing nights.
However, under the new system, not all students will be guaranteed housing. Once they have been assigned to a specific residence hall, the unhoused students will be entered into a draw. The number of times that students’ names are placed into the draw will vary by how many semesters they have spent at Wellesley—i.e. rising sophomores’ names will typically be entered twice, rising juniors’ names will be entered four times, and rising seniors’ names will be entered six times. In each dorm, two students’ names will be picked from the pool at random. These students, explained Tringet, will have to compete for housing.
“We are excited to announce a new housing competition!” gushed Tringet. “Two unhoused students from every residence hall will be taken to Munger Meadow. Now, they aren’t allowed any weapons, but they are expected to fight. The one special student who wins the competition will be granted housing.”
When asked for specifics about what will happen to the losers of the housing competition, Tringet smiled magnanimously and gave assurances that the students would be “in a better place” than they were at Wellesley.
Although Tringet would not give any further comment on this line of questioning, one unnamed source in the office confirmed that housing “is now literally a fight to the death.”
Throughout her interview, Tringet emphasized that the competition will be designed to strengthen the sense of community in residence halls, and also to add another fun campus event to the spring semester events calendar.
“I think that watching students compete for housing every year really epitomizes what it means to be at Wellesley. Allowing students to cheer for residents from their own halls at mandatory watch parties will build community and fortify close relationships within dorms. Additionally, we will be killing two birds with one stone—wait wait, that’s not what I meant. Don’t put that in the paper. I meant that we’ll be giving the campus a two-for-one deal, not only by making the housing process more fun, but also by creating more events for students to attend!” she said.
Tringet would not give any further details, but did muse about a possible name for the competition.
“Well, it’s happening at Munger Meadow, so maybe we’ll call it the Munger Games. Yes, that has a nice ring to it.”