Officials apologize for housing errors

College officials have apologized following a significant computing error by Library and Information Services (LIS) that led rising upperclassmen to receive incorrect room draw lottery numbers on March 31. Administrators also expressed regret this week for ongoing delays in finalizing super block housing assignments, despite recent reassurances that the process would be concluded by the end of Spring Break.

“We recognize that room draw is a significant process for students,” Provost and Executive Vice President Alison Byerly acknowledged. “There was a lot of anxiety associated with it, and everyone involved feels very badly that more anxiety was added by virtue of the mistake, but we hope that once people got their real numbers they were able to make their plans accordingly.”

Residential Systems Coordinator Karin Hall-Kolts explained that it was not Residential Life that discovered the mistake, but physics student Nate Woods ’11.

Woods “sent me a very nice message which prompted me to sort the numbers and take a look at them in different ways. When I did that, I noticed they didn’t seem random to me either,” explained Hall-Kolts.

In an e-mail to Hall-Kolts, Woods explained how he had compared his number “with 13 Atwater rising seniors, and we all had numbers in roughly an 80-number range (about 380 to 460, or so). No Atwater students I’ve talked to had numbers outside this range. Out of about 850 numbers, the chances of this happening are about (1/10)^13, or about one in ten trillion.”

“These numbers strongly suggest an issue with your number assignment algorithm,” wrote Woods.

To verify Woods’ claim, Hall-Kolts first sorted students by graduation year, and confirmed that seniors had been issued better numbers than juniors, in accordance with standard policy. However, when Hall-Kolts sorted all the numbers from highest to lowest, she “realized [large groups of students] were all in the same Commons and that all of their numbers were relatively close.”

Hall-Kolts then “verified the information with LIS staff,” who confirmed that an error had been made.

“Somehow the commons had played into it to some degree,” explained Hall-Kolts. Although commons affiliation is taken into account for first-year and sophomore housing, a 2007 revision of the housing system stripped that affiliation entirely from the upperclassman room draw process — or should have, at any rate.

Dean of Students Gus Jordan admitted that the LIS mistake caused some commons to receive poorer numbers than others. Some commons had numbers spanning the entire class, but other commons had numbers that reflected only higher ranges.

Under normal conditions, said an LIS programmer, the computer algorithm should “assign each student a six-digit random number, then sort [this number] by class and then read through that and assign an [ordinal] number” that marks the rank of the student in the housing draw.

The programming error resulted from the accidental addition of “some other field in the sort process.” The staff member declined to comment on the specific nature of the addition.

“It’s a procedure, and one of the steps in the procedure was wrong — totally unintentionally,” said the LIS staff member in a phone interview.

Once the administration had been alerted to the blunder, students received another e-mail on April 1 from Karin Hall-Kolts with the correct lottery numbers. Jordan assured students that LIS “implemented a two-step process so that they could be absolutely certain they were randomized. We certainly didn’t want to make another mistake.”

Byerly explained that to fix the problem, programmers simply removed upperclassman commons affiliations from the program and ran it again. The numbers are generated based upon a randomized assignment that relies only on verification that students are eligible for housing. The current system does not take into account students’ lottery numbers from previous years.

However, before Hall-Kolts could distribute the new numbers, the situation was complicated even further by an April Fools’ prank that capitalized on LIS’s error. A fake e-mail began circulating among affected students early Thursday morning with the subject line “Room Draw Info – Update” from the address khall.koltz@gmail.com. Although Hall-Kolts’ last name was misspelled, the e-mail had the same format as that issued the previous day by the real Hall-Kolts, and included students’ full names and class years.

“I heard about the e-mail in a text from a friend who was in the library at the time,” said Evan Masseau ’11. “She had a great number, so I actually biked down to her from Proctor to celebrate. Then, when I checked my number there, mine was also superb, so we were both very excited. The fake number kept me pretty psyched through my Orgo class and on toward lunch, when a friend called me to tell me it was a prank. I was obviously disappointed but extremely impressed with the prankster.”

Despite Masseau’s feelings that the prank was “well-played,” Byerly referred to the prank as “odd” and Jordan called it “unfortunate.”
Jordan added that the administration’s main concern, apart from any additional frustration the prank may have caused among students, is the “misuse of our information technology system. We reserve our e-mail for official correspondence, and if someone misuses [this system], they are subject to disciplinary action.”

Frustration over the distribution of incorrect room draw numbers has been exacerbated by ongoing complications in the super block assignment process. The super block system is currently “on hold,” according to Jordan, in anticipation of new housing openings that “may impact the appropriate location of the super block groups.” Converting buildings into dorms has been both expensive and complex, Jordan explained. All members of super blocks were issued random room draw numbers.

At press time, the Office of Residential Life still had not provided super block applicants with confirmation of their housing status.
Ty Carleton ’12, the leader of the Comparative Music super block, expressed concern and frustration with the super block process’s inconclusiveness. In early March, Residential Life offered Fletcher House to Comparative Music, yet upon submitting a full roster and being told that contracts were forthcoming, Carleton says he had not heard anything. Two separate requests for contracts and information resulted in, first, a general e-mail sent to all super block leaders explaining that the process had been put on hold, and finally, “a very vague reply” that mentioned “problems with some of the super block assignments.”

“I don’t want to lay blame,” wrote Carleton in an e-mail. “I don’t understand the intricacies of this surely daunting task of securing housing for an entire student body, and I’m sure Lee Zerrilla and Karin Hall-Kolts are working as hard as they can under these unfortunate circumstances that are out of their control. However, it would be a huge weight off my shoulders if we could just get these contracts signed, and I look forward to some transparency from the administration in the near future.”

Senior Residence Director Lee Zerrilla offered no deadline for an announcement, but assured students that finalized super block information would be provided “before room draw,” with the hope of allowing students adequate time to think about their housing plans. Room draw for rising juniors and seniors is scheduled to begin with large block applications on April 22.

The latest announcement came just weeks after Jordan wrote an e-mail to students expressing his “hope to have the decisions made by the time students return from spring break.”

Zerrilla also echoed regret over the delays in announcements.

“It’s unfortunate that I don’t have more information,” said Zerrilla in a phone interview on Tuesday.