Obviously, the time between getting housing numbers and the actual housing lottery is stressful for most people. Those with great numbers find themselves beseiged by friends they never knew they had, and those with terrible numbers discover the joys of grovelling and crying. Most people wish the University would find a solution so that more people would be happy with their housing and wouldn't have to massacre their dignity in order to have four walls and a ceiling for another year (Note that my definitions of walls and ceiling are now used much more loosely after a year of living in East). I feel like I would be a failure as a social critic and child of the middle class if I didn't offer up my own solution that mainly helps me and people much like me. First, let's look at the actual problems that the University has to overcome. With the economy failing, Brandeis is really struggling to make ends meet and has decided to increase the size of the incoming freshman class in order to bring in some more money. In order to keep the school appealing to potential applicants, Brandeis also has to maintain their pledge to guarantee housing for freshmen and sophomores. Clearly, the University then has to find more rooms and more beds for freshmen and sophomores which generally means taking them away from juniors and seniors. Last year, this included herding a majority of the class of 2005 (my class) into East in order to free up more rooms which could be lofted triples. While I wasn't neccesarily pleased with the decision, I could understand it, and, in the end, it turned out not to be terrible. With promises of an even larger freshmen class coming in next year, the administration thought fast and came up with a perfect solution for how to fit more freshmen and maintain some form of housing for upperclassmen: they were going to give more singles to the freshmen and sophomores. Brilliant! If a double and a triple can hold more people than a single, and now there are more people, we should put them in singles! Confused yet? Believe it or not, there are more than selfish reasons for wanting the singles for the juniors and seniors. College is a new and difficult concept for a lot of incoming freshmen. Students who are shy sometimes have a hard time learning to deal with being in the presence of their peers 24 hours a day. While most people hate having a roommate, freshmen gain a lot from the experience. Having a roommate forces you to be more social, teaches you how to deal with aggravating people who you can't avoid, and most importantly provides a person to keep an eye on you if the stress becomes too bad or the opportunity to become lazy becomes too strong. I did pretty well with my freshman roommate even though we had some fights and I would say that overall it was a rewarding experience. Putting freshmen in singles is a huge mistake. Putting juniors and seniors in doubles is also a gross error in judgement. The University can't be too surprised at the shortage of alumni donations when something as simple as housing becomes a terrible experience for most people involved. Considering that my class is losing housing options for the second year in a row and many of us will end up living in makeshift Jehuda-villes out on Chapel Field, the University shouldn't be surprised when people get upset and decide not to give back to Brandeis and when Princeton Review ranks Brandeis as one of the most unhappy schools in America. At most schools, freshmen get the worst housing and upperclassmen get better housing every year. At Brandeis, the opposite is true. Here, freshmen are getting singles while juniors and seniors are looking at living in doubles that may not even be ready for next semester. It's bad enough that my room this year is the size of a bathroom stall with a bed, but next year I'll apparently be sharing it with someone new. As much as I value the education I receive here, there is no reason why Student Life should be so pathetic. Maybe if hundreds of students didn't get sick from cafeteria food, weren't forced to consider living in tents and cardboard boxes, had reasonable events on campus actually worth attending (and attending sober as oppose to the two or three people actually do go to), and felt that Brandeis was more interested in making money than in giving them the smallest modicum of happiness, the University wouldn't be in the monetary crisis it's in right now. I pay over $35,000 a year to this school, I don't think it's asking for too much to be treated with respect.