Pearls of Wisdom: Bad numbers, good people

From your student ID (04847828) and your beloved PO box (16623) to your SUNet password and your GPA (just kidding), series of digits have a way of snaking behind you as you trek across campus. But for all the numbers that define the Stanford experience, few are held more near and dear to the heart than the randomly assigned, computer-generated integers that determine your housing destiny.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Rush is over, bids have been handed out, and pledge parties will start cropping up just as soon as the brothers can get their hands on some plywood and chicken wire. Future staff members have nearly completed their application process and anxiously await the day when appointments are announced (May 3). And everyone who has not gained housing immunity is trying to choose roommates while losing as few friends as possible. Indeed, Draw is upon us.

As if navigating the drawmate selection process was not daunting enough, the calendar of deadlines associated with Draw is enough to send anyone packing in the direction of a Dead House. Today, for example, priority applications are due. Last week, any athlete going through disability draw had to turn in their forms, too.

Although it’s hard to believe that anything still comes out in paper form — and before its electronic version, no less, on Wednesday, May 9 at 5 p.m., the dreaded/desired numbers will be posted at housing offices across campus. The preservation of the posting ritual, with all of its anxiety and line-cutting and celebration-alongside-misery, is quite reassuring to an old timer like me. With all of the new buildings and policies and regulations on campus, the public unveiling of Draw numbers is a throwback to an era when life was neither simpler nor easier.

Ask any alum what their Draw numbers were and I’ll bet he or she will be able to list them in chronological order. He’ll probably do it with more than a touch of negativity, too. Consider it the unavoidable Fall of Draw: We all begin in the innocent garden of pre-assigned freshman housing, are tempted by the fantasy of single or double digits, and, with the bitter aftertaste of a year in a four-class dorm in our mouths, end in cynicism.

At this point, I suppose I should own up to my own insanely lucky housing experience. After a year in an all-frosh dorm with co-ed halls, I spent three straight years on the Row (with the exception of a summer in a first-floor single in Roble). Before you stop reading or send me Facebook hatemail, let me say this: I did not sleep with anyone in ResEd; I just got lucky in a few other ways.

I remember my first Draw moment of truth like it was yesterday. While one group of double-digited girls celebrated and a quartet of boys bemoaned their 1982, I stood in Stern’s courtyard in unresolved limbo. My 1276 neither sealed nor screwed my fate. With only one drawmate, I could feasibly end up on the Row or in Mirlo — aside from making reasonably intelligent choices (i.e., not ranking Bob, Mars, and Lambda Nu the top three, followed by Stern, Wilbur, and Mirrielees), there was nothing I could do.

Although I lucked into 592 (now Phi Psi) and my roommate lucked into the best in-house draw number (much like the eternal application gauntlet we run here, Draw is a seemingly endless process), I decided I’d relied upon the benevolence of the Row gods long enough. The following year, I joined the ranks of Draw-immune staffers and watched the bloodbath from my secure position as the Head Theme Associate in La Maison.

I didn’t avoid the headache entirely — there weren’t enough singles in the house for every staffer to have one — but I did get first-pick of the eligible rooms and first-dibs on my random roommate. I walked away with the sweetest double in the house and the roommate… let’s just say that in Draw statistics, as in life, one out of two ain’t bad.

As an HTA responsible for awarding priority to hopeful future residents, I’ve also had the wonderful privilege of experiencing the Draw process from the other side of the desk. And let me tell you, it’s no picnic for ResEd, either. Scores of emails containing the same questions, most of which are answered explicitly on the application, lots of panicked “please accept this even though it’s one hour/day late” pleas, and only a single tangible bribe to show for it. At least it was a good bottle of wine.

Last but certainly not least, my senior year I drew with a friend who had a legitimate disability. The slightly less legit piece of the process — she was abroad Fall quarter, but they agreed to let her draw with us anyway, and give us all disability preference — backfired when I got put in Bob’s disability room (shocking) and subsequently kicked out when she returned. Casa (Italiana, not Zapata), however, is hardly a poor consolation prize.

Aside from reliving my own Draw dramas, this column does have a single point to make. For all of the bitching and moaning we do about Draw, no housing on this campus is truly terrible. The water runs, the electricity works and the common areas are cleaned for you. Add in utilities, garbage, and maintenance fees and the rent, it turns out, is not all that high. If you want some housing experiences to complain about, just wait for your first apartment.

Lisa Mendelman lives in an amazing one-bedroom whose internal temperature will be at or above 90 degrees from now until October. Email her at lisame@stanford.edu.