ResLife Moves to Manual Housing Selection System
Conflict of interest disclosure: Twomey is a Housing Advisor.
The Office of Residence Life is introducing several changes to on-campus housing for the 2025–2026 school year. The most significant change is that rooms on campus will now be selected manually by students seeking on-campus housing rather than automatically assigned. Students seeking on-campus housing must fill out an application between February 24 and March 14, but rooms in general (as opposed to interest-based) housing will be selected manually by students. Students receiving housing will be randomly allocated a time slot during one of several housing selection nights held in person in early April. At the housing selection nights, they will be shown the floor plans of the buildings in which they can live and then will select a room. Following their selection, they will sign a contract to complete the housing process.
Students desiring to share a double or triple together will be able to form a roommate group in the online housing application (as has been done in previous years), select a room jointly, and getpriority during the housing selection process. Students in interest-based housing—the Language Houses, Queer Collective, Students of Color Community, and the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Collective—will be auto-assigned rooms in a process similar to how housing assignments have been done in recent years. Students with disability accommodations that involve housing will be given priority in the selection process and should submit requests for accommodations to Disability and Accessibility Resources by March 14.
If a student is unable to make their assigned housing selection time slot, they may appoint a proxy to select a room on their behalf by emailing ResLife. If a student did not fill out the housing application in time, is given a spot on campus from the waitlist, missed their time slot, or is unsatisfied with the options they (or their friends) had, they may attend one of two overflow housing selection nights. If students wish to trade housing assignments, they may do so after the housing selection process by emailing ResLife; housing selection time slots are not transferable.
Before the pandemic, Residence Life used a similar process to assign on-campus housing, but switched to the auto-allocation system used in recent years during the pandemic, when the large in-person process of manual housing selection became untenable. In an announcement sent to the student body on Monday, February 10, Residence Life stated that this return to the old system was done "[t]o enhance resident satisfaction and give returning students more agency over their housing assignments," and stated that "this change will allow students to choose their assignments, know their roommates in advance (if applicable), and make informed decisions about living on campus based on available spaces." The email noted that auto-allocation "has led to challenges for returning students, such as unpaired roommate groups and placements outside of stated preferences."
Other aspects of housing at Reed are changing as well: instead of all students besides first-years being housed together, sophomore buildings will be separate from junior and senior buildings. Trillium, Naito, and Sullivan will remain first-year buildings, while sophomores will be housed in Bragdon, Foster-Scholz, MacNaughton, Griffin, and McKinley. Juniors and seniors will be in the Grove (except BIPOC housing in Bidwell), Reed College Apartments, Birchwood Apartments, Old Dorm Block, and Anna Mann.
Residence Life will be hosting info sessions on March 5 and April 9 to further explain the process, and there will be building information sessions held at the various on-campus buildings from March 17–21. If a student has questions with the housing selection process, they should check the relevant Residence Life webpage at https://www.reed.edu/campus-life/housing-dining/seek-housing/returning-students/ and email ResLife at res.life@reed.edu.