Keep Floor Communities Together

ORU's housing transition this Monday will provide very little chance for floor communities to stay together. As a result, many are likely to be broken apart during this transition. I believe there is a better way.

Instead of a free-for-all open selection, I propose that Housing place people on floors by groups.

This can work as follows:

1. Groups who want to be placed on a floor together put in requests to housing, listing their names and z numbers
2. Housing places groups onto floors at their discretion, combining groups to fill up floors
3. After groups are placed, normal housing selection would then open for anyone who does not have a group or prefers to choose where they live

The community of being a floor is one of the most foundational parts of ORU's culture. The desire to be on a floor with friends is far more than simply the convenience of being close to them--it means attending the same hall meetings, floor events, roommate dates, and banquets; it means seeing each other daily in the bathroom or on the hall; it means sitting together in chapel; it means having shared experiences as part of a community in a way that is simply not possible when living on separate floors.

Free-for-all housing selection by design assumes that people care more about where they live than who they live with. I would like to argue that for most, the opposite is true. If housing will consider a method of placing together groups of people, I firmly believe the ORU community will greatly benefit, and that this upcoming change in housing will go far more smoothly.