 Hello everyone, welcome to Facebook Live. As you all know, roommate selection begins tomorrow. My name is Sophie and we're going to go over some questions that a lot of you guys have had. We're here today with two housing officials, Alicia and Tia. And I'm going to let them introduce themselves, but we're also here to answer any of your guys' questions. Thanks so much for hopping on to join us. We know that finding a roommate is really important. As Sophie said, my name is Alicia Gilbride. I'm an Associate Director for Administrative Services. And so I oversee our contracting and room assignment process, and part of that is roommate selection. Hi, I'm Tia King. Awesome. And right now we have five people live with us. So to start off, can you guys just tell us a little bit about the roommate selection process and what we should expect? Sure. So the very first thing that I would recommend is that you watch the roommate selection video that we posted last week. That can be found in a couple of places. You can find it on our website. It's the phase three video, and then you can also find it in the housing portal at the end of phase two. So before you log on, watch that video just so you know what to expect. When you're ready, and you're ready to go in and start looking at roommate options, you can log into the portal. There are a few different ways that you can search, but you log into the portal where you've done everything else, completing a contract, filling out phase two, and you'll just go to the same spot. The last thing that we want you to know is that this really isn't time sensitive. You can do it tomorrow. You can do it next week. Maybe you plan to live with somebody that hasn't completed their housing contract yet, and so it really isn't time sensitive. As long as it's done before your roommate selection time, you'll be just fine. Great. And how do I search for my friend or roommate? So there are three different ways that you can select. You can go in by detail. You can go in by profile, by matching page, and you'll see the three different ways. We have about 19 people joining us right now, and so if anybody wants to tell us where they're from, we're always excited to hear that as well. That's good information. Yeah, and what if I don't want to have a roommate? Do I have to find a roommate? So you don't have to find a roommate. In fact, if where you live is more important to you than who you live with, it's possible that you'll have more options if you're by yourself going through room selection. But what happens if I don't take a roommate? So what would end up happening is that you would go in and choose a room later in the spring, like normal, rather than having two or three or four people that you would assign with you. You would just go in, select your room, and then what will most likely happen is that somebody else will come along and choose the other space in that room, or another roommate group would come in and take the spaces in that room with us. So you're likely going to end up with a roommate. It just will not be somebody that you've selected. Okay, great. And we're actually joined by Julia from Texas and Allison from Illinois. Hello guys. Hi. And so here's another question. I'm planning on being in a living learning community. Is there anything I should know? In the living learning community, the room selection process is exactly the same as it is. The only thing is you will only see if you do one of the searches, people who are in your LLC. Great. And how many roommates can be in my group? You can have up to four people in a roommate group. So yourself and up to three other people. You don't have to have four. You can only have, I mean, if there's only one other person that you really want to work with, you, you are a roommate and then a couple of other people. Or you can have four people. And we have Raisha from Florida with us and Trina from Arkansas. We actually have a question from Julia. She said freshmen are allowed to live in a dopey, correct? That's correct. Yes. Great. And one small report about us being sounded muffled, so we're just going to speak up a little bit. We'll speak a little louder. And what is a group leader? Do they pick the room too? They do not necessarily pick the room. They are just the first person who goes out and searches and you and your group. Let's say you and three other friends know that you want to live together. Any of you can be the first person to send out a friend request. That is the group leader. The person within that group who has the earliest contact date will be the one who actually selects the group. Gotcha. And what are some common reasons that I might not be able to find the roommate that I'm requesting? So when students call us in there, they're having trouble finding the person that they're looking for. We typically ask a series of questions that we start trying to find information on our own. The very first thing that we're going to do is make sure that that other person has a housing contract. If they don't have a housing contract, then they're not going to show up as an option for roommate. The second thing that we're going to do is we're going to look to see if either one of the two students are in a living learning community. If one of them is and the other one isn't, they're not going to be able to find each other. And then one of the other things that's actually more common than you would think is that at the end of phase two, there's a roommate agreement search. And so there's a little box. And if that box is left unchecked, that student will not show up in the roommate search process. So basically they opt out. Great. What happens if my roommate decides to go to school somewhere else? If your bonded roommate decides to go to school somewhere else, there's a couple of things that you can do. So if you're the group leader and it's just you and your friends, you can click on with this group. Or the person who's not going to be in the group any longer and goes to school at the university can click leave this group and then you can search for that. And we have 27 people live with us right now. And just remember guys, you can submit any questions you have along the way. But what happens, or I'm sorry, how do I remove myself from a group if I decide I want to live with someone else? So Tia, if I touched on this a little bit, but if you decide that you want to live with somebody else, if you're the group leader, then you'll just hit the leave group. What that is going to do is it's going to dissolve that whole group. So I would give your friends a courtesy and let them know that you've done that so they can go back to school or left at one stage together. If you are not a group leader, you can just hit, like, give that a little button that says leave group and then you'll be on your own. Great. And we're also joined by Blair from Dallas. Hi, Blair. Yeah, Christine's question. I'm trying to, the way we have it structured, I can't quite see all the words, but basically asking. So the roommate selection process is only really for people that know someone going through, not for students that are kind of going, I guess, solo. Is that true? That's not true. Tia, jump in. Sorry, I didn't mean to kick over. So there are three different ways that you can search for a potential roommate. If you know somebody, if you go to high school with somebody or you have a friend that's also coming here and you know a very specific person that you want to live with, you can search by details. And so you'll put in their student ID number or the very first part of their UR email address and that person should pop up. You can also search by those profile questions. And so back in November, most likely you filled out that personal profile and just kind of noted your preferences. How clean you like your room, you can search for a potential roommate based on what is most important to you. And then if you just want to skip all of that, there is an option to search by suggested roommates. And so those suggested roommates are, they're ordered by percentage. And so how high did you, or how compatible are you basically with a potential person? Cool. And Arianna asks, can freshmen live in Yocum? Yes, they can. And Julia asks, what is the order for roommate selection like income returning or LLCs? There isn't really an order to roommate selection. So when the gates open tomorrow at 10 o'clock, everybody can go in and start looking at potential roommate options. When we get into room selection, priority does shift a little bit. And so current students who are planning to stay on campus again next year will have priority. And then students in the Honors College will follow that group and the members of the living community and then all incoming students. Room selection for returning students will start mid-March, March 17th. And then for first year students, honor students will go through the week of April 7th through the 10th. This calendar is located on our website. Then you can find those rounds of room selection on our website. Awesome. Thank you for that question. And Hilary asks, how can you pick a roommate before knowing which dorm you'll get into? Because you can go in and if you are in an LLC, that's the only one that's going to limit you. So what you can do is you can go to the search and you can check with someone who would say matches you. Our system has matched and you can talk to that person through email. You are given their email address and you can contact that person and get to know that person if they may or may not have a particular place that they want to live. It's just you're getting to know them. Awesome. Thank you. And Suzanne asks, what is the deadline for prospective roommates to make arrangements to room together? At what point does a student get assigned a roommate if they haven't coordinated with someone they know? So again, we'll open this up tomorrow at 10 o'clock and it will remain open for most of the room selection process. So well into the screen. We typically don't turn it off until about May. And so as long as you choose your roommate before your room selection time, when you go into select a room, the two or three or four of you will be attached together. And once one is assigned, whoever assigns rooms will be able to assign all roommates together. Thank you. It's not very confusing and a lot of difficult as it sounds, I promise. And Trina asks, my son has no clue who he wants as a roommate but knows what dorm he would like to stay in. Should he pick a compatible person or just bypass all the options as far as roommate selection? If where he lives is what is most important to him, he is better off not to select a room. He can let's say he wants the maple and there's not a whole lot of space left, but there is one space left in like three rooms. He can just pick himself in that one space whereas if he's bonded to a roommate, it's not going to let him go into that one. That being said, there's no way for you to see what type of profile and things. If a student is tall, it's what's most important he has to do with a thing that just stays unbothered. It's also really important to note that a student can go through their roommate matching process and select a room. And then if in this case your son finds a compatible roommate, they get to room selection, they can assign themselves to wherever they want to live. And then he gets the best to get the best of the world to get where he wants to live and who he wants to live with. But like he has said, if location becomes a priority, he can go into room selection. They can decide, you know what, there's not a room for both of us, so let's just split up now. Hopefully he's contracted early enough that that won't be a problem and he will be able to get one of his top choices of all. And not really have to make that decision between who he wants to live with and who he wants to live with. Awesome. And Gabby asks, where will single rooms be available? So, again, that's all of these for taking over. Right now in our system, we have a number of single rooms at the Northwest Quad area. Morgan, Gatewood, Clark, Party. We have single rooms for returning students at Walton Hall. This year we're able to offer some single rooms at Humphrey, Yocum, and Pumper. We have system 8 being able to do that again for the 2021 year. And we have just a limited number of single displaces like Holcomb and Futral. But for the most part, all of our locations are on double occupations. Gotcha. And Julia asks, what can we have inside the door room electronic-wise? Because I know at some schools you can't have coffee makers and such. Curious or great, you can have those. You can't have anything with an open plane. You can't have a hot plate, I think. If you'll go to our handbook that's on our website. Housing.urdu.com. And then we have a move-in website that comes out every June 1st. And a lot of that detail is there also. And the website that Christopher was referring to has what to bring and what not to bring. So it's very helpful. Yes. And Ariana asks, is it mandatory for a freshman to have a roommate? We actually answered that earlier. It is not. And Blair asks, we have four boys who would like to be together. What are the odds that that will or won't happen? The answer is it really depends. It depends on how early those students contract and where they want to live. I'll quickly kind of go over the room selection process. So again, on our calendar we have the rounds of room selection outlined. Students are ordered based on when they contract. And so the earlier a student contracts is the earlier they get to go select their room. Now the benefit is that they get to pull in all of their bonded roommates. So if somebody contracted in mid-September when we opened the process, and maybe one of their roommates didn't contract until yesterday, he is going to get to pull in that group of roommates. So in that situation, the student contracts in September, they have a pretty good chance of all four of them getting together. The longer we go through the year and into the spring semester, probably the less likely all four are going to be able to live together. But once we reach that point, we have some flexibility in our system. And so students can start kind of assigning themselves a couple of rooms side by side. They maybe aren't in the same suite together, but they can be next door to each other. Great. Gabby asks, if we have a specific person all ready to room with, what do we need for selection? And then separate questions, student ID number. So they will search by detail. And in that, you can either put in your student ID number or their U of A user name. And you won't need to add U of A or a candidate. You want to be room with so-and-so and know who it is. Awesome. Thank you. And a different Gabby asks, whenever phase three opens up, do all of my roommates have to fill it out or just one person? Everyone will have to take some kind of action. So if I want to live with Tia, I will go in and start a group in order to be my roommate. She's going to get an email and she'll be asked to confirm whether or not she wants to do that. So everybody is going to have to either send something or respond to something. It's really important that you kind of make those plans up front. So if I get really excited and I go in and start a group and then Tia does the same thing, we're not going to be able to find each other because we're both group leaders. So again, somebody's going to go in and start the group, invite other people, and then they can respond and say, yes, I want to be in this group. And remember that the group leader is not necessarily the person that we'll be doing with the selection. That is the person within the group that has done their contract. And Tia could also go in and search, if I've started a group, Tia could go in and search for me and request to join. Awesome. Thank you. And we actually don't have any more questions from students at the moment. We have any more questions on our question sheet? I don't think so. Oh, great. Fantastic. The big thing is, do the video, if you have any questions about the video, I would, for all the parents out there trying to help their students out, I would let the students do this part. The roommates are a pretty important person, so I would let them. Since it's not time-sensitive and they can do it on a Saturday, I would let the students do this part. I'm not saying that as a housing staff member or as a mother. Both. And I will add, as a student who went through roommate selection here, you really do want to find someone that you're compatible with, so sharing up with those similar interests is important. Do you want to show the website? Yeah. Yeah, okay. We'll just show the portal off a little bit first and then we'll sign off. We've got one more. Julia asks, how are the pod bathrooms split up? Like how many per each bathroom? It is up to 12, I believe. In a dohy? Yeah, 12 people. And pod bathrooms are just bathrooms that are sort of located close to those pod-style places in a dohy. They're not in-suite bathrooms. Right, right. I think they're great because someone else brings them, someone else buys them to look at them. And you get to know more people around you. Yes, definitely. So should we pan over here and take a look at the portal here? So again, you're going to log into the portal where you've done everything else. You're going to click on the residential contract, live with parent form. It should automatically take you to wherever you left off. And so you should end up on the roommate selection portion. You'll see this video. You can watch the video again. You can do that again. You can do that tonight. You can do that now. It's on our housing stage, so it should be easy to find. And then again, we've talked about the different ways that you can search for a roommate so you can search by details, which is that university ID or the front part of a university email. You can search by profile. You can search by suggested roommate. So this is just kind of what our system thought would make a compatible roommate. You can see that I'm the group leader. I'm classified as a returning student. You can see that Tia is my roommate and she is a new student. So she has already gone in and accepted my invitation to join my group. We can communicate by sending messages. We know typically what happens is that students will exchange social media information. So they'll start following one another on Instagram or whatever media they use. If I decided, you know, I wanted to live with someone else, I could go up and delete our group. Tia could log in and she could leave this group. I'll hit save and continue. Oh, and then I got logged out. But I think those are kind of the nuts and bolts of it. And again, it will be up at 10 o'clock in the morning. It is not. We're going to save it a lot. It's one of the only things we're going to save it about. It is not time-sensitive. So there's no reason to rush to your computer at 10 o'clock tomorrow. There's no reason to jump out of your English class to go select your roommate. This can wait. You just want to make sure that it's done before you go into the selection. Any other questions? I don't think so. Okay, we'll let us know if this was helpful. And if you want to see a similar video for a room selection or any other process moving forward. Great. Well, thank you guys all for being here today. And thank you to our two housing officials for answering everyone's questions. And good luck tomorrow when the room selection process starts.