by Daniel Covington
February 18, 2025 is the second day of the housing lottery process. Last year, The Cento shared opinions on how students were experiencing poor communication and a shoddy launch of the new eRezLife housing system. This year, it looks like the RLO office has reevaluated and taken immense feedback from students. This year will be much smoother—fingers crossed.
So, is there anything students can do to make the process work better for them this year? Yes.
Please read the housing email before you do anything. The biggest problem aside from communication arose with filling out the housing forms. If you are reading this and still have not filled out your housing form, you will be assigned a later time in the selection process to choose your housing. You need to fill out the form asap.
After you have filled out the form, you can pick a representative to create your roommate groups. Everyone needs to have filled out their form to be added to any group. Also, if you are studying abroad at any point, you still need to fill out the housing application.
The application will close at 11:59pm on Tuesday, April 1st. You will not be able to participate in housing selection (the housing lottery) without a completed application.
The housing lottery will run from Monday, April 7th to Friday, April 11th and from Monday, April 14th to Friday, April 18th. There will be two lottery rounds per day and six rounds for each class:
- Rising Seniors will participate April 7th to 9th
- Rising Juniors will participate April 10th to 14th
- Rising Sophomores will participate April 15th to 17th
“Remember to submit your application early for the best chance to be placed in one of the first rounds for your class!” — RLO email
Next, when your representative has their lottery time, they will pick a room and will “put” each person into each “bed” on eRezLife. It is important that you have enough people to fill each bed in a dorm or suite.
If everything goes to plan for RLO, there should be no issues (but things almost never work out quite like they are supposed to). If you encounter problems with the application, I suggest that you do not email the RLO office. Your best bet is to stop by or call them. There are three or four people working in the office to help 1,400 students. If there is a large influx of questions, it can be hard for RLO to get back to everyone. I had the best success last semester calling or going in-person.