I’ve been living in dorms for three years now.

Maybe it’s rare to hear an almost-senior say this, but I actually don’t hate living in the dorms.

It’s right on campus, with everything being less than a 10-minute walk away. There’s plenty of people to hang out with and a front desk that sells sodas for pretty cheap.

What’s not to love?

But the new process of signing up for on-campus housing is just a pain.

It’s online, so you’d think it’d be fantastically easy. But as my roommate and I were attempting to sign up for a room, the website kept getting overloaded and we both had to restart the application process, about 10 times.

Now, I’m a relatively anxious sort of person — OK, I’m a very anxious person — but still, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get a room in the hall that I wanted, that some freshman would end up swiping it up.

I know it’s a new process, but it was just so frustrating. What would have taken me 5-10 minutes on paper wound up taking more than an hour and a half online. Some improvements need to be made here.

A few ways to improve:
Why have room sign up online at all?

I know, I know. We need to be moving forward, not backward, and soon enough if something’s not online, it’s going to be prehistoric. But filling out a housing contract on an actual sheet of paper and sending it via snail mail hasn’t failed me in the past three years. Hey, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

Allow more specific times for students to sign up for their rooms.

Rather than having 10 hour blocks of time, allow students to have more specific, smaller gaps of time to sign up. I mean, if the website kept getting overloaded, there were obviously too many people trying to sign up at once. The sign up time would need to be extended to more than just a few days, sure, but it’d keep the website from getting too busy.

Maybe this is less practical (i.e., it would take longer) for the Housing Department, but it would make it easier for the students. And since students (and/or their parents) are the ones paying for their rooms, that’s not too much to ask.

Allow students to be able to connect with their room sign-up time on MyBlugold CampS.

OK, I know a lot of students dislike MyBlugold CampS, but really, it’s the one-stop place for everything else that we have to do to continue our UW-Eau Claire careers. Need to check or pay your tuition bills? You go to CampS. Need to sign up for classes? You go to CampS.

I know the Housing Department is rather separate from tuition and class issues, but it would be so much less confusing to sign up for a dorm room if the sign up process happened on a website I was already familiar with.

Offer some sort of learning opportunities so students can understand how to do it.

My RA and Hall Director are awesome. And the people I’ve had to speak to in the Housing Department have always been amazingly helpful and kind to me. But if room sign up has to happen online and on a website other than MyBlugold CampS, I wish I could have been shown how to use the website first.

There were mandatory wing meetings in my hall to alert students of the new process, but I still didn’t understand how to use it properly.

Some sort of online tutorial could have been offered, or the website could have had instructions on the log-in page.

In the end, it’s great that Eau Claire is continually trying to improve the university experience, not only on the campus, but online as well. But all the same, a little more help
would be appreciated.