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Kristy Vivas (left), assistant director for operations, facilities, and marketing in the Office of Residence Life, and Frédérique Evans, assignment coordinator, discuss a roommate match.
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Assignment Coordinator Harmonizes Residence Life
Frédérique Evans, assignment coordinator for the Office of Residence Life, wants answers to four questions from USF undergraduates seeking compatible roommates on campus: How neat are you, how quiet, how private, and how late do you like to go to bed?
There is a lot riding on Evans’ expertise in matching those answers into potential roommates, including the harmony within a residence hall and how many problems the buildings’ directors can expect later on.
“A lot of (students) are coming from having their own bedrooms and bathrooms to sharing their bathroom with 20 to 30 other students, and that’s a big difference,” Evans said.
August is the month Evans takes the answers to her questions and puts together more than a dozen floors of communal dwellers in USF’s residence halls, in the process creating a home base and new potential best friends for entering college students. This fall Evans must find space for 848 new freshmen, plus sophomore transfers, athletes, scholarship students, and others who are required to live on campus. This year, because of the large number of freshmen, the residence halls will be filled to capacity, with lounge space converted to bedrooms. It makes promoting a cooperative co-existence an important job.
“When there’s less communal space, it’s taxing on everybody,” said Kristy Vivas, assistant director for operations, facilities, and marketing in the Office of Residence Life. “It’s our job to make the most people happy.”
If roommates decide they don’t want to live together, they have the option of moving out two weeks after the start of the semester. There is also a mediation process open to them if problems heat up later on, or they can go to the residence hall director for mediation.
“The resident advisers play a big role in helping people make it a community and taking pride in their shared space,” Evans said.
USF has looked into buying software for online matching, a new trend among universities hoping to eliminate the time-consuming process of matching roommates by hand. But Vivas and Evans said the software is expensive and, from student polls, they know students like administrative involvement.
“Students don’t want to do everything online,” Vivas said. “They like a personal touch.”
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