Spring semester brings many new things to think about — new classes, new clubs, and, most dauntingly, housing for the next semester. Everyone is eager to find out what new dorm and room they’ll be living in, wondering how to decorate it and what new people they’ll meet there. However, housing at UMass Amherst has become almost impossible to acquire in the past few years, and it’s a big problem for students on the campus.
As I’m writing this article, the housing selection for the 2025-2026 school year is coming to a close, and pretty much all vacant spaces are filled. Yet, many students on campus still do not have housing for the year. The way UMass went about housing this year was honestly quite ridiculous. All students who signed up for an appointment received a priority number based on the number of semesters they’ve been on campus and a lottery number within that priority. They then incorporated different selection processes available to students, such as Shared Room Selection, open to rising sophomores, and Single+ Room Selection, open to upperclassmen. There are also separate processes for students in the Honors program. Shared Room Selection guarantees students a space, while Single+ does not.
As I mentioned previously, I have many problems with this system. Firstly, students were not eligible to create a roommate group with students not in their room selection process. For example, if you were a rising sophomore trying to room with a rising junior, you would not be able to unless the sophomore opted out of their guaranteed housing and entered the Single+ room selection. I personally experienced this fiasco as my upperclassmen friends and I (a rising sophomore) were trying to create a roommate group with hopes of living in a Sylvan suite together, only to be told by housing that it was impossible. Frankly, I do not understand why they implemented this policy, nor do I think it makes any sense.
Another confusing aspect is that they determined whether or not students were eligible for Single+ room selection using when they entered UMass Amherst as students. For example, students admitted in Fall 2023 or prior were eligible for Single+, while students admitted in Fall 2024 or later were only eligible for Shared room selection. This means that upperclassmen transfer students were treated the same way as rising Sophomores. My friend transferred to UMass this year and is currently a junior, which hypothetically should put her in the Single+ room selection with other rising seniors. However, since she entered this year with the freshmen class, she was only eligible for shared room selection. This to me seems extremely unfair and UMass should have gone by grade. Also, UMass prioritized upperclassmen rather than rising sophomores, which does not make any sense. Almost all sophomores at UMass still live on campus while many upperclassmen choose to move off campus. So, giving them priority just makes it even harder for rising sophomores to secure housing.
My final issue is that rising sophomores were not eligible to pick single rooms unless they were within a Sylvan suite, which are limited. Understandably, not every student who wishes to live in a single will be able to, as there’s not an abundance of them. Still, I found it unfair that rising sophomores could not live by themselves, even if they wanted to.
UMass Amherst has acknowledged the housing crisis at this school but has yet to take action. They are still over-admitting students and trying to create housing out of thin air (cough cough forced triples). The only action they’ve taken to combat this was building the Fieldstone Apartments. But instead of making them into dorms, they made them into extremely expensive off-campus housing. That land could’ve been used to create a new dorm area, but instead, UMass was focused on creating another cash grab.
The housing problem is not going to get any better anytime soon, but bringing awareness to the issue will increase our chances of fixing it.
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