I got the e-mail March 7. It was from Melissa Murtagh about room lottery information; it was time to pick where I was going to live next year. As a sophomore, I wanted to go for Hill or Village next year with seven of my other roommates. One problem. Eight friends, seven spots. The question: who “makes the cut?”

You have lived together for the past year now, know each other’s little quirks and now are expected to split up? Many fellow sophomores are facing this same problem of, “where the heck am I going to live now?”

I was shocked when I found out that even if we wanted to have eight people in our room next year, we couldn’t. No exceptions. So, we are allowed to be stuffed into Mountainview with ten, sometimes even 11 people, but we cannot live with eight people in Hill or Village by choice, even though that is what has been going on for years anyways?

What are we going to do? To tell you the truth, I’m still not entirely sure. No one wants to throw their friend under the bus, so what’s the other option? Well, living in Mountainview again, of course. I know that I am not the only one going through this right now. I think that next year we are going to be seeing a lot more juniors living in Mountainview for this same reason. Maybe next year Mountainview will be taken over by juniors. All I know is that I am very frustrated with this new policy. How do you tell one roommate that they are just not allowed to live with you anymore?

I think that students should have been notified much earlier of this change in housing policy. Perhaps I am na’ve and I should have sought out the information on my own much earlier, but I have a feeling that many students are in the same boat.

I just never seem to hit these housing policies at the right time. When we want fewer people in a dorm room, we are stuck in Mountainview with 10 roommates and when we want just one extra person in a dorm room with us, it’s a no-go. I would understand if we weren’t allowed to have eight people if the dorm could not accommodate eight people, but it has been done before! It is this idea that I can’t seem to get my head around.

In any event, good luck to all of you in pursuit of housing for next semester and I hope all of you “make the cut.”