Allow me to paint you a picture. Imagine this: senior year, a group of three, two are honors students with a 4.0 GPA, the other is on the Dean's List, a total 47 path points, and a 20% chance of homelessness. Yes, you read that right. Homeless. Let me explain. Once a group of four turned three because a beloved roommate became an RA (a totally awesome move on her part), with only a handful of path points to their name. Because of the way the housing system is set up, groups of three are not allowed to apply into upperclassmen dorms unless they are a group of four. This rule essentially screws over groups of three and any randoms that may still exist in the system. Seriously Dayton what do you do with those randoms if groups of three cant apply to four-person rooms? Where do those poor randoms go?
Surely one would think that there are three person houses on campus right? Well yes, but only sixteen of those houses exist, and they are being fought over by all the seniors and the record-breaking class of juniors. According to housing and residence life, if there are more than sixteen groups applying for these three-person homes, it falls to the path points to determine the arrangement. The year of the students, credit hours, and GPA's are not even put into consideration. It all falls to the Path Point system. And if you don't have enough path points well… good luck finding a safe house near campus for a reasonable price.
I have never bashed the path point system until this year. Freshman year I loved it, I had time to go to the events and racked up a large number of them. Sophomore year was pretty much the same thing, but I had less time to commit to them because my classes began to be later in the day. Here we are junior year staring into the abyss known as Housing Hell. The three of us are in class when 80% of the path point events are taking place and the events we can make you have to arrive two hours early for anymore. Spending so much time at these events leave little time for completing homework or studying, and when you have a large class load, they become almost impossible to attend. The path point system is hurting incoming seniors, especially those who are in good academic standing. The University of Dayton needs to prioritize these older students instead of having them run the risk of not being able to qualify for university housing just because they have a smaller sized group.
