On March 8, at the Inter-Residence Hall Council General Assembly, the Office of Residential Education, as part of their information session, held a raffle for priority housing for the Fall 2017 semester. The raffle sparked controversy among the student body, with some members of the Class of 2018 challenging the raffle as unfair and a break from tradition, and characterizing the response of Res Ed as hypocritical.

At the IRHC general assembly, students who attended were given raffle tickets. Students who are studying abroad received an email notifying them of the opening of the Fall 2017 Housing application on April 2. The email included a link to a Room Selection Questions Form, which notified students that if they submitted the form before 6:00 p.m. on March 8, they would be entered into a raffle to win priority room selection. There were no alternative ways available to enter the raffle for students who were not studying away and could not attend the IRHC general assembly.

Ghaniba Ali, the president of IRHC, explained that although the raffle was held at an IRHC General Assembly, it was an initiative of Res Ed.

“So Res Ed wanted to present at the [IRHC] GA and they said there’ll be priority housing, but again that’s all Res Ed, we didn’t really know at that point what exactly [they] meant … We did let them know that there should be a way that study away students should be able to participate,” said Ali.

Kelly Murphy, Class of 2018 representative, was at the general assembly, and was surprised by the number of winners.

“They started pulling [the raffle tickets] out and they pulled one or two and I was like ‘oh that’s fine’ and then they kept pulling, kept pulling, and I was like ‘oh my god I’m not going to get a good room next year, this is not fun.’ ... I was pretty upset by it,” said Murphy.

Kate Melville-Rea, Class of 2018, drew attention to the housing raffle on March 8 in a post on the NYUAD Forum Facebook group. Eight posts on the topic of the housing raffle followed Melville-Rea’s post. These included copies of emails sent to Res Ed, memes, a poll, a letter, a petition and a screenshot of an IdeaScale post.

Kelly Murphy shared a petition on March 11, which collected the names and NetIDs of students opposed to the housing raffle. Murphy presented the petition to Jordan Stone and Terrence Sanders, the Residential College Operations Managers of A2 and A5 Residential colleges respectively. At the time of the meeting, the petition had roughly 60 signatures, but gained more following the meeting.

At the meeting, Murphy asked for the raffle to be rescinded as well as for there to be no further raffles in the future. According to Murphy, Stone and Sanders could not agree to either of these requests. Murphy noted that Stone and Sanders felt that students needed to be encouraged to attend this general assembly, as Res Ed had changed some of the housing policies. Lacking any budget for a purchased incentive, the incentive had to be free and a raffle for priority housing fit these requirements.

“I mean, it kind of sucks, everyone at this university is always having the problem of getting people to show up [to their events],” said Murphy. “and so if you have something like having people come so they can get amazing rooms, that’s super unfair.”

16 members of the Class of 2018 also wrote a letter to the Class of 2020, in which they implored members of the Class of 2020 to choose rooms in A5, rather than A6, so as to maintain the unwritten tradition of seniors living together in A6.

In response to the discussion on NYUAD Forum, Sjur Hamre, Class of 2018, created a post on IdeaScale, which argued for making IRHC a committee of Student Government to improve accountability.

“I find it troubling that Res Ed uses a Res Ed-controlled entity to seek feedback on behalf of the student body and claim that it represents the voice of the students,” wrote Hamre.

Hamre also highlighted, in a post on NYUAD Forum, that Stone had downvoted this idea on IdeaScale, and that voting had been temporarily blocked on the post after it was flagged.

On April 2, in response to these claims, the Student Government general assembly will be a forum for discussions about the raffle and the role of IRHC and Res Ed.