The Housing Games — May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

When I wake up, my roommate’s bed is empty. With bleary eyes, I gaze across our room, I fixate on the dark wooden slab of our door. Our home for the past seven months. My roommate’s absence is loud in the quiet peace of the morning. She hasn’t been sleeping well, nor have I. It’s no secret we’ve both been having nightmares about the impending reaping day. 

Every year, students who plan to live on campus vie for the best dorms in a grotesque, primal sort of feud. They run around campus in search of sponsor gifts — golden tickets left by ResLife — and battle for the position of RA to avoid having to share a space with up to four other people.

At Loyola, the Peacemakers — sorry, housing application managers — don’t care whether you fail or succeed in your housing application. They just want to see who gets which dorm. 

This process has been used since 1955 when Campion Hall opened. For most Loyola students, it’s all we’ve ever known. These barbaric processes, pitting young adults against each other is simply the school’s version of normal.

While the upperclassmen sit and watch from their cozy, spacious apartments, the rest of us are left to tussle over a few scraps of paper and elbow our way into desperate attempts to get students to go to Loyola events. 

All through the beginning of the spring semester, the housing applications loom heavily in the forefront of students’ minds. Like a marble statue of President Snow, the effigy of Arnold Damen lurks behind them as they board the shuttle to Water Tower Campus, thoughts occupied with the room dimensions and layout of Baumhart Hall.

It seems no matter how far I remove myself from the stress of the housing selection, my personal ruminations always wander back to resting on my impending housing-induced doom. They linger at each doorway I pass on my way through the halls, and hunt me down through the IC and study spots.

This dread seeps cold and heartless into the innocent souls of those living on campus, and causes past tributes who have moved on and grown too old for the school to pause and shiver in fear. 

Like the heartless battle towards the cornucopia, students are constantly duking it out over the promise of priority housing, whether it be through attending games and entering raffles or trekking across campus for hours in search of a tiny slip of paper.

These challenges and scavenger hunts feel cruel, especially when the few students who do actually end up happy with their dorm just have to do it all over again the next year. There’s no reprieve from the horrors of the ResLife portal.

It’s a vicious cycle, the way each March brings new trials and tribulations with the housing situation. In true Hunger Games fashion, some students choose to simply volunteer for the seedier housing arrangements to avoid the hassle that comes with trying to dorm in Santa Clara or Fordham Hall.

As the Housing Games begin in full swing, students rush across campus, making a fool of themselves for the amusement of the Gamemakers — ResLife administration. Applications are written and rewritten, roommates change and shift like patterns in the chilly and unforgiving sand of Lake Michigan. 

For now, though, the tradition still stands that students will fight to near-death over simple liberties such as housing. It becomes more apparent with each passing day, countless hopes are dashed for students who wish to room in nicer, more spacious dorms. 

A map of campus sits open in my computer browser, two more are loading in the background, each are virtual tours of dorm options for the coming semester. In the early morning quiet, Madonna Della Strada rings a mournful tune. 

The games have officially begun. May the odds be ever in your favor.