The Office of Residential Life (ORL) hosted a student feedback committee Wednesday, Nov. 8, led by Associate Director for Housing and Operations, Daniel Percopo, and Assistant Director for Programming and Staff, Christie Anglade.

The committee met to discuss any issues or criticisms about the different policies and procedures established by ORL as well as to talk about potential developments that ORL is planning to make in the residence halls on campus.

“The halls that the improvements are going to be focused on are Dunham, Winchester, Sheffield, Ruden, and Celentano,” said Percopo. “Those are areas that we’ve received a number of feedback over the last three years, those are areas where a majority of upperclassmen are living, and they are also university buildings. Forest Hills…Savin, those are lease buildings, so it’s harder to change some things. But there are definitely things that we can request from a landlord.”

Proposed changes to these upperclassmen residence halls include improving the lighting in the Dunham, Sheffield, and Winchester apartments, reinstalling stoves in Sheffield and Winchester, improving room signage and hallway aesthetic in these residence halls, reinstating living rooms in the Dunham apartments, and repair the stairwells and updating the laundry rooms in the Ruden apartments.

In addition to the residential renovations, changes are also being made to the university’s guest policy.

“We want to combine the guest and visitor language as there is no delineation between a guest and a visitor,” said Percopo. “So why not just allow you to have three guests? So we combined those and just said ‘Why not just have three guests overall?’”

Under the proposed change to the guest policy, students would be allowed three guests to be signed into their residence hall. Students would also be allowed one overnight guest who could stay three consecutive nights during the week.

Near the end of the meeting, Percopo also announced a change that could be made in the way room selection is done. Instead of the usual four-week process of room selection, Percopo suggested completing the entirety of room selection in one four-day weekend. Another suggestion brought forward by a student in attendance was to do away with the usual lottery system and replace it with a system on credit based merit. In other words, students with more credits would be issued a higher lottery number.

In the midst of the proposals and changes ORL is open to any feedback, issues, or ideas that students may have. A second student feedback committee will be held later this semester.