Students living in campus residences are required to sign up for rooms today using a new ranking system which assigns points to students based on their classification and GPA, a decision more than 200 residents are against. Rushton Johnson, dean of student life, implemented a new ranking system last Tuesday to determine which students get first pick of room assignments. Students are first awarded points based on their classification.
Freshmen receive 5 points, sophomores 10, juniors 15 and seniors and above 20. Students then receive their GPA in points. If a sophomore has a 3.0, his or her total score will be 13 points.
Students who sign up for a room with one or more roommates will have their combined total averaged together so that the highest average rank can have first pick of room assignments. If a student does not receive the room assignment applied for, the student will be asked to apply for another room.
Until last Tuesday, students living at Nicholls received room assignments on a first come, first served basis, the same system used at every other university in the state. Brittany Taraba, Student Government Association senator at large, said Johnson claims his new system gives students total control over who their roommates will be and gives upperclassmen and more academic students more priority when choosing room assignments.
Taraba said Johnson had this new system approved by an advisory board of students. She said the board is not very representative of the students living on campus.
John Kerry, SGA director of student rights and grievances, had 43 complaints about the new system filed by press time with more than a dozen additional complaints waiting to be filed. A petition against the system circulating through the residence halls has received nearly 200 signatures and two Facebook groups have been started, the most popular of which, called “Nicholls Housing is Trippin,” has more than 200 members.
“No one I’ve talked to is for it,” Taraba said. “There are enough students against this that we’re hoping to sit down with those in charge to have this reversed and figure out what’s going on.”
Anthony Hall, mass communication junior from Neosha, Ala., said the new system is a terrible idea. “It’s incredibly biased towards a small section of students living on campus – seniors,” Hall said.
Patrick Boudreaux, government sophomore from New Orleans, said the new system is going to affect every student living on campus. “They should have asked the students if we need this new system,” Boudreaux said.
Johnson and Lisa Grubbs, director of residence life, were unavailable for comment by press time. The first sign-ups begin today at 4 p.m. in Powell Auditorium.
