Last weekends housing lottery ended at an unprecedented 1787, according to members of Residence Life, eliciting surprise from many students. According to Associate Director of Residence Life Jeremy Leiferman, this is the highest number the lottery has gone up to in the last four years, if not more.

There are several factors that may have contributed to this, including the large number of students who declined housing this year. This is the first year that we let students decline housing at room selection, and we did have a pretty high number of students that did that, said Leiferman.

According to Leiferman, many of these students had already settled off-campus housing arrangements. He explained that the students that I asked had either signed a lease for off campus housing or were in the final stages of that. He added that this increased interest in living off-campus was probably related to the loss of Ridgewood quad next year, which has led some students to feel that off-campus housing was a safer option.

Leiferman also added there were also an estimated twenty-five students who simply did not show up to room selection, which will result in a $200 fine for each of the students.

Residence Life says that they assigned housing to approximately 1700 students on Sunday, which is only about fifty students fewer than were housed last year. Leiferman attributes the fact that so many students were housed even with the loss of Ridgewood to “the fact that we worked to adjust the designations to allow for the most oppottunities for undergraduates to live on campus.”

Some students who were planning to study abroad had also checked the box to be assigned a housing lottery number, but did not participate in room selection. There was a bigger community of students who are studying abroad for the fall, said Leiferman, explaining that this may also have been part of the reason why the numbers went higher.

Brandeis students with high lottery numbers expressed surprise at how far the lottery went. Taylor Shiells 09, whose number was 1718, was one of the last students to be assigned housing on Sunday. I was one of the last seven people who got inI really didnt think Id get a room. Im glad that it turned out well, he said, although he also added that its kind of vexing that we have no idea whats going to be available and whats not going to be available.

I was expecting to not even be close to housing, said David Pepose 08, who is one of the first people on the housing wait list. Id just come back from out of town and was expecting my proxy to tell me that housing closed two hours ago. But when I came home early to campus, I got a phone call about half an hour later from my proxy saying, theyre about to hit the 1700s and there are 12 Grads left, so get to Usdan now.

Pepose added that it was pretty amazing, seeing how fast the numbers were going there were so many people, all with some pretty high numbers, hoping to see if that last Grad would be theirs actually, its funny, because the guy before me ended up getting the last efficiency in Grad. He said that the entire process was nothing short of exciting, adding that Im higher up on the waitlist than I ever thought I would be, so now Im just crossing my fingers.

Editors Note: David Pepose 08 is the Hoot news editor.