The Article below was published in Vol. 135, Issue 6 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on March 6, 2020.
By Emma Overton ’22
Editor-in-Chief and News Section Editor
Evan Weller/Facebook
On February 6, Interim Director of Operations for Residence Life Jordan Ahlersmeyer-Huang sent an all-campus email informing residential students of the upcoming room selection process and relevant changes to this year’s process. In addition to reminders about Housing Contract deadlines, Ahlersmeyer-Huang’s email explained that the department’s room selection process would see significant changes. Noting that the practice of using cumulative credit hours and GPA to determine a student’s entry time into the online room selection portal “unintentionally creat[ed] a barrier – students who experience hardship that impacts their academic success were having their room choices arbitrarily limited,” Ahlersmeyer-Huang outlined the rationale behind the new process in his all-campus email.
The new room selection process, to be implemented next year, “will continue to use cumulative credit hours to create selection groups based on seniority, through credits completed,” according to Ahlersmeyer-Huang, but will not factor in a student’s GPA. These new selection groups will then be “randomized in a computer-generated lottery” to determine the order in which students can enter the room selection portal.
Following Ahlersmeyer-Huang’s announcement, some students expressed frustration with the policy change. For Evan Weller ’21, this meant expressing his frustration on the Lake Forest College Class of 2021 Facebook page through a series of posts calling for his classmates to join him in expressing their frustrations to Residence Life Staff. Weller, who was counting on the old room selection process to try to get a super-double for his senior year, felt that the policy change was an unwelcome surprise. Although Weller stated that he can agree that the former process, which considered GPA “[was] slightly unfair,” he explained that the new policy “benefits students who were successful in high school because people that are nonwhite have less access to AP classes and that seems to close the doors for minority students and other students to have access to those nicer rooms because now we are basing it on success and ability to afford things in high school.”
Weller further noted that “I understand the reasons [for the change], I just felt frustrated. They said they consulted students but I don’t know what students they consulted because a lot of people that I’ve been talking to have really liked the way the room selection process was done.” Referencing recent student activism regarding diversity and inclusion on campus, Weller
stated, “this is Lake Forest College. We’ve had a lot of problems with [the administration] not listening to students. It feels like the decision was sprung on us . . . I think an open forum would have been really helpful because we have been so open as a school about having conversations . . . about diversity and inclusion issues but this is a diversity and inclusion issue and they didn’t host a forum about it. I think that this closes barriers for low-income students to have nicer rooms and I don’t think it is inclusive.”
Responding to Weller’s and other student’s concerns, Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Andrea Conner explained that “academic achievement is something that a college wants to celebrate. And we do that. We have The Dean’s List and we have graduation honors but we felt that when it comes to room selection, it is unnecessary to lean on GPA as a marker of academic success.” Further explaining the equity of the new process, Conner stated “to us, it feels deeply unfair that somehow I deserve to go before you because I have a higher GPA. There is such a wild difference between the amount of effort that goes into those GPAs, what academic success is to any individual person and even differences among majors and how easy it is to get certain grades, that we felt it was an unnecessary marker within room selection.”
However, as Conner noted, the new process is not without flaws. “We haven’t made the whole thing totally equitable because if you have the privilege of coming in with more AP or transfer credits, you are still going to get to go sooner in the process.”
Commenting on the student responses that she received, Conner shared “I had a couple of really thoughtful conversations, especially with juniors who are facing down their senior year and are worried that they won’t get to live where they wanted to live. I think their reactions were based on their frustration and disappointment and worry. I also have had multiple correspondences with students who have said that they really like the new policy. It’s not about a tally, but we’ve had more positive responses than negative.”
Other Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) institutions, including Beloit College, Grinnell College, and St. Olaf College, use similar room selection processes based solely on a student’s credits and associated seniority.
