Student Assembly members discussed a series of three resolutions designed to bolster student involvement in the selection of resident housing directors at yesterday’s meeting. The plans include the restructuring of the general housing lottery system and the creation of in-house housing lottery systems in the Collegetown dorms like those on West Campus.

The members contemplated the possibility of giving rising sophomores and juniors rather than seniors priority in assigning time slots for the general housing lottery. V.P. Nikhil Kumar ‘11, sponsor of the resolution, said, “I talked to campus life ... and they said that every year a lot of parents call and complain that their freshmen didn’t get decent housing times and [Campus Life’s] response is basically that it was because of an S.A. resolution.”

Currently, seniors are given priority in the housing lottery; but as Kumar explained, the idea of giving priority to juniors and seniors essentially undermines the University’s guarantee of on-campus housing for freshmen and sophomores.

“Right now Campus Life only guarantees housing for the first two years but [now] the idea is to put sophomores first in line and then juniors and seniors second and third,” he said.Raising the roof: The Student Assembly met in the Straight to discuss how to improve Cornell’s on-campus housing.

Although some assembly members felt that seniors should be able to enjoy the small senior perk of getting a good lottery slot, many disagreed. As Representative Matt Danzer ’12 said, “For many students, coming to college is a big move one year and then the next year to expect them to move off campus ... I think that’s a big move and I think juniors and seniors are better prepared.”

V.P. Chris Basil ’10 concurred: “If anything I would say to those seniors who don’t want to live off campus, tough. You’re 21 or maybe 22 and you’re going to have to be living on your own anyway ... basically if anyone is left out of the housing process I would rather it be sophomores than seniors.”

Kumar also proposed a resolution to create a continuing occupancy lottery, or “in-house lottery” for students in the Collegetown dorms — Cascadilla and Sheldon Court — similar to the in-house lottery system that currently exists on West Campus.

Since “a lot of people were dissappointed with the results of the lottery” last year, Kumar believes that “it was necessary to address the on-campus lottery system. “The in-house lottereies would only affect somphomores and juniors and the Campus Life lottery slots would still affect freshmen.”

Ray Mensah, ’11, was opposed to the creation of additional in-house lottery systems because, he said, “My concern is that ... it allows many people to live on West Campus for 2 or 3 years and other people never get the opportunity to live in West Campus dorms. I’ve never gotten a chance to live on West Campus.”

Danzer agreed. “I think that [we should consider] drastically decreasing or eliminating the in-house lottery system. I’m a big believer in equality of opportunity not necessarily equality of result, so I think that everyone should get the same opportunity [to live on campus].”

Rep. Jonathan Rau ’12, Rep. Adam Nicoletti ’12, and Ray Mensah ’11 also proposed a resolution which seeks to bolster student involvement in RHD selection by creating two voting student members on the Office of Residential Programs’ screening committee for Residence Hall Directors. One of the students would come from program housing and the other from the residence hall system.

Nicoletti explained the need for such student positions, saying, “I’ve found that administrators will change what they’re going to say in the presence of a student in the room. The most input students have had before is that sometimes R.A.’s are allowed to sit in on RHD interviews and submit a paper form and as we all know paper forms can be ignored whereas two students cannot be.”

Mensah was quite supportive of the resolution, adding, “I think that this resolution is long overdue.”

All three resolutions were only up for discussion this week; the assembly won’t vote on these matters until after students return from fall break.