Editorial: Housing heartaches
La Salle must account for and correct housing mistakes

April 12, 2006

Housing selections and applications are always an extra-stressful process for La Salle students. Mishaps do still occur when La Salle’s Administrative Services processes over 1,200 applicants, despite updates that include such benefits as online registration. While most students were able to get their first or second housing choices, there were some people whose experience was less than desirable.

As per the request of the Athletics Department, two townhouses from the St. Miguel complex are reserved each year for the men’s basketball team. The houses were not reserved this year due to a clerical error. Applications for St. Miguel’s were made available on Tuesday, March 14 at 12:30 p.m. and due on Thursday, March 16 at 3 p.m. On the last day of meetings to assign students to the St. Miguel Townhouses (March 30), this glaring oversight was detected. This was also the same day request forms for other kinds of housing (singles, doubles and triples) were due. The last of the students who came to the Miguel meetings thinking they had reserved townhouses were in for a surprise: they didn’t have anywhere to live. Administrative Services was faced with a problem; it had to honor the contract guaranteeing two townhouses to the student athletes, and it needed to provide housing for the displaced students. In the end, the student athletes got their houses and the others were split up.

“Simply put, an administrative error was made and it needed to be corrected at the time the students came in for their housing selection appointment,” Administrative Services Associate Director Sean Killion said. “The end result was the same as if the error had not been made, i.e., the group did not qualify for a townhouse, but rather did qualify for an apartment.”

There is a serious problem with this assertion. If the students had known that they were not qualified for a townhouse, they would have been informed by March 16 under normal standards. Instead, they did not find out until March 30. The students did not know that they were going to be denied housing until they came to their meetings, so groups of five were forced to decide who would live with whom and where.

“This has definitely caused tensions between my friends and me. A seemingly simple task that can’t be messed up, and yet [Administrative Services] did it,” one student said.

La Salle has mishandled other applications as well. Clerical errors caused serious delays in several students’ applications. It appears that in at least two incidents, the applicants’ genders were mislabeled in the system because their ID numbers were coded for females rather than for males. When they applied for rooms, the system reminded the administrator that students of opposing gender are not allowed to room together. It should be known that the names were not ambiguous or regularly used for both genders. They were so unmistakably identified with one sex that there is no excuse for the error, names akin to Mike or Steve. Killion acknowledged the shortcomings but offers a vague solution: “It’s a good system, but we need to make sure these clerical errors get taken care of.”

Clerical mistakes are inevitable but any good organization should admit when it is in the wrong and promptly address the problem. However, after being alerted as to its mistake two weeks ahead of time, Housing neglected to correct the rrors before accepting applications, which prevented the students from registering on time and receiving the rooms they requested.

Mistakes of this gravity are unacceptable. University housing is costly, and it is unfair that some students end up living where they do not want to for an entire year because of preventable administrative mistakes. No one wants to live in a dormitory he or she does not desire, especially when he or she has earned the right to live in a better one.