New Priority List to Insure Transfers On-Campus Housing

By the end of this semester, all of the transfer students who are currently for on-campus housing will have the chance to move into one of the Houses, College official said yesterday.

The expected near-perfect largely to a reordered priority list which took effect this year, placing transfer above some other categories of students waiting for on-campus housing, said Assistant Dean of the College Thomas A. Dingman '67.

The large number of transfer students who will receive on-campus housing this year is a significant change from last year, when transfer students were told by the administration that they would be ineligible for any kind of on-campus housing because of overcrowding, Dingman added.

He said that the new figures were "quite exciting" in comparison to past years, adding "At this point we're further along on the waiting list than we have been in past years."

But the road to an on-campus room has been a rough one for transfer students. Until last year, they were eligible for on-campus housing but were placed relatively low down on the priority list.

"Last year, administrators decided to make transfer students ineligible for on-campus housing because of overcrowding in the Houses.

Then late last spring a Faculty Council sub-committee, appointed, to consider how best to handle non-resident students, recommended that transfer students be made eligible for housing and have a higher priority than other categories of students, such as those who failed to meet the deadline for housing contracts.

Under the newly ordered priority list,39 transfer students have already been accommodated in on-campus rooms this year, as opposed to the 11 students who received housing by the end of the academic year 1981-82, housing officer Teresa Cavalier said. She added that the total member of transfer students who were waiting for housing at the beginning of this year was much larger than in past year.

In addition to enabling more transfer student to live on campus, the new guidelines have also helped to live on campus the new that vacated rooms are filled as soon as possible, "As soon as a room is vacated in a House, the assistant calls they and I send the next [transfer] student on the list over to took at the room." This effort to fill rooms stands in contrast to last year when the occasional room vacated in the middle of a semester would remain empty, she said.

The new guidelines instituted this year also state that once a transfer student has moved into a House, he becomes a permanent member of that House, as opposed to last year when transfer students were allowed to move into vacated rooms only on a temporary basis, Cavalier explained.

Fereed Mangalji '84 was among the transfer students who arrived at Harvard last year to find that their names had been taken off of the waiting list. But under the new priority, officials last semester were able to find a space for Mangalji in Leverett House. Mangalji says he is "pleased, to say the least "at the turn of events." "It was purely luck, but once you get in, they really consider you part of the House."

In a related matter, housing officials are currently reviewing another policy instituted last year. The policy allows students who move off campus after living in a House for at least one year to retain their House affiliation, and to move back to their original House after one year. The policy has been criticized as having the potential to deplete the ranks of Dudley House, the College's organization for off-campus students.