A perfect storm of residence hall closings, learning community obligations and room shortages have led officials in University Housing to seriously consider changing the residence hall sign-up process for next year.

Under the proposed policy, students would no longer have the option to apply for the same room or a room in the same residence hall in which they currently reside. Instead, all students would be placed in a campus-wide lottery.

Housing spokesman Peter Logan said the proposed change is the result of an anticipated shortage of 2,200 rooms that will not be available to returning students interested in living in the same room or residence hall.

Logan said the combination of residence halls that will either be closed for construction, open to only first- or second-year students or reserved for learning communities next year makes it impossible to figure out a fair sign-up process in which students can choose the rooms they want.

“For that reason, we thought it’s probably going to be more equitable for most resident students to simply offer from the start the campus-wide sign-up step and forgo the same hall, same room steps that proceeded it,” he said.

Part of the complication results from the fact that starting next fall, Couzens Residence Hall will be closed for renovation. As a result, approximately 550 fewer rooms will be available.

About 120 students in the Michigan Community Scholars Program and 60 students in the Honors Program — who currently reside in Couzens — will be relocated to other residence halls. Honors students will move to South Quad, but it is not yet confirmed where MCSP students will be housed.

Though North Quad will be opening next fall, Logan said it won’t solve the room deficiency. The new hall will have approximately 450 rooms, but the University will still lack 100 rooms after losing the 550 spaces in Couzens.

While Logan could not confirm where students from MCSP will be placed, he said they will not be put in North Quad.

Additionally, all of Mary Markley Residence Hall and three houses in Baits II will be reserved for first-year students as part of the First-Year Experience Program. This makes approximately 1,495 spaces unavailable for upperclassmen. In the past, upperclassmen could apply to live in Markley or any house in Baits, but with the freshmen programs, they can no longer do that.

While Stockwell Residence Hall is set aside for returning students, the residence hall concentrates on its Sophomore Year Experience Program. Logan said this poses a problem for sophomores currently residing in Stockwell who may want to live there again next year. He said Housing may allow some current residents to return to Stockwell next year, but it has not yet been decided how it will determine which students will be eligible to return.

Housing also plans to reserve rooms for the University’s seven residential Michigan Learning Communities. Each learning community decides which students can remain in the program. Unlike other residents, students returning to a learning community will have the opportunity to stay in their current hallway, but whether they will have the choice to stay in their same room is not yet known.

After adding up the space allocations from all residence halls, Logan said Housing could not come up with a plan that would permit students to keep their same room or hall if they so wished, while also giving other students a choice of where they want to live.

“One of the biggest concerns we’ve had is that if we try to shuffle around the number of spaces to accommodate the students who had been living in Baits or Markley or Couzens, and give them an upper hand in the selection process in some other hall, then it really complicates the process for the students in those other halls wanting to reapply,” he said.