Election Results

Consider some highlights from the questions asked during last month's College Council elections.

• More than 3 times as many people oppose the current incarnation of the system overall compared to those who support it.

• More than 80% of students surveyed said they were either satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the current housing system, compared to less than 20% dissatisfied or even somewhat dissatisfied. Nearly 7 times as many students said they were ``satisfied" as ``dissatisfied."

• More than twice as many students thought the proposed system would not increase class-year mixing as thought that it would.

• Aspects of the proposed housing system that the plurality of students (over 40%) thought were particularly strong were: 6 person pick size, general housing renovation, and construction/purchase of additional co-op housing. It is notable that none of these aspects require any sort of restriction on where people can live. All of them could be implemented in a free agent system as easily as they could be in a cluster system.

• Aspects of the proposed system that the plurality of students (over 40%) thought were particularly weak were: room draw exclusive to each cluster, size of each cluster, and having an anchor house as the social center of each cluster. The first was chosen by more than 60% of respondents. What is most notable here is that the aspects that students thought were weakest are those that are the most fundamental parts of the system.

• More than 2 1/2 times as many students thought that a ``well-planned restructuring/modification of the HC system and ACE" is a better option than the anchor housing system, compared to the number who said such an option wouldn't do enough to fix social and residential life.

The vast majority of students dislike the proposed system and think a well-planned restructuring of certain aspects of the current system would be better. The majority of students either don't think the system would accomplish the lofty goals it has set for itself, don't think the problems exist in the first place, or both. The greatest numbers of students chose the most fundamental aspects of anchor housing as the weakest, and the aspects that could easily be implemented within a free agent system as the strongest. In other words, students prefer the current system to the cluster system, no matter how much the CUL fixes up the details, because the largest objections students have with the system are the fundamental aspects that the CUL refuses to change.