Students with OAE accommodations blocked from forming roommate groups under new housing rules

Students with disability-based accommodations or religious observances will be unable to join or form roommate groups in this year’s housing process, according to application instructions released Tuesday.

Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) assigns students with approved accommodations their housing in advance to ensure reasonable accommodations. In previous years, students were able to extend their housing priority to assignment groups, granting their roommates the same early housing process.

“We were essentially prioritizing students for reasons that I think had a net effect of leading to some unequal outcomes for other students,” Michelle Rasmussen, Vice Provost for Student Affairs, told The Daily.

The change comes on the heels of growing complaints among students over OAE accommodations being exploited to secure more desired housing. 

“We’ve heard a great deal from students…around the overall ability to access the kind of housing they want to live in,” Michelle Rasmussen, Vice Provost for Student Affairs, told The Daily. “These changes have been informed by a desire to be responsive to what students have told us, or some of their pain points in the room draw process.”

Students with accommodations will also be unable to form or join a group during their housing application, meaning they will be unable to select roommates ahead of time. This aligns with the process for Residential Assistants (RAs) and students selected for pre-assignment into a themed house.

“This is an opportunity to make sure that we’re giving the priority and first assignment to the students who belong in those groups, but we’re not bringing in other students who don’t actually qualify for those different assignment processes,” Rasmussen said.

The application instructions acknowledged students’ desire to live with friends, and wrote that students with approved accommodations could “share their assignments so that their friends can attempt to select a room in the same residence.”

The new housing rules for General House and Room Selection will also give rising seniors the earliest gate times instead of sophomores. In past years, rising sophomores were given priority to select from “sophomore priority spaces” that included a Resident Fellow (RF), leaving some juniors and seniors dissatisfied with their assignment.

For the coming academic year, seniors will be given first priority, followed by juniors and ending with sophomores. Housing groups with a mix of class years will be given priority based on the lowest class year.

“We want our seniors to be able to live where they want to live. This is their last chance, their last year at Stanford,” said Justin Akers, senior director for R&DE Housing Assignments, adding that the process was “just about making sure, as you spend more time here at Stanford, you get more priority in the housing system.”

The change is also partly a result of Stanford removing their neighborhood system and the ResX residential model before the start of the 2025-26 school year. “Sophomore priority spaces” were more logical under the previous system, Rasmussen said, as students were expected to remain in the same neighborhood over four years.

Under the new system, sophomores will no longer be required to choose from priority spaces and can instead choose from any rooms available.

“This new process just seems a little bit more intuitive and straightforward than I think perhaps it has been in the past,” Rasmussen said. “I don’t anticipate we’re going to see dramatic changes in where different class years actually end up by September.”

After the first round of housing selection closes on May 29, some students will be left without assignments due to all available rooms being selected. A second round will take place in July after some undergraduates cancel their assignments over the summer and more spaces become free. A final third round will follow on a rolling basis. 

“I do suspect there will be some students unassigned after the first round, as there always are, but if they have guaranteed quarters remaining, they absolutely will be assigned in the subsequent rounds,” Akers said.

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