Originally designed to bring levity to an otherwise panic-inspiring process, SHAC began awarding first-place room picks to the winners of a lip sync contest last year. The most obvious and inherent flaws of lip sync stem from the very idea of determining contestants' residences by judging how well they can wear skimpy women's attire and move their lips. Linking quality of housing to performance in any test of skill will result in some students feeling bitter and cheated; the fairest approach to apportioning housing is to keep Room Draw random. Lip sync also creates further inequities, banning mixed room groups and those containing SHAC members and placing undue burden on the proxies of a large group whose members have all gone abroad.
Unfortunately, SHAC seems to believe that the pleasure of seeing your friends perform on stage outweighs the serious concerns of the majority of the school population. If we must have lip sync, we should at least scale down its impact and bump the winners up 10 spaces from their place in the ordered list.
Another perpetual problem with roomdraw is the inevitable attempts to outsmart the system. Pushing the deadline for Room Draw back two to three weeks would get rid of the junior scam of getting a room and subsequently "deciding" to go abroad. This would give ample decision time for the more "irresolute" members of the junior class to finalize their plans. It would also help for SHAC to keep a closer eye on the status of the study abroad plans of participants in roomdraw.
SHAC may have had the best intentions for the lip sync contest, but they should just try their best to make us forget that Room Draw is hell, while making the process easier (and we don't mean more Sugar Jones). NOTE's comprehensive online floor plans are a step in the right direction-though hopefully not in the direction of a fully online roomdraw, as this would disadvantage those with slower computers and Internet connections. The runners in the Campus Center could also learn from the dawning computer era and update the charts more quickly, so that prematurely high hopes are not cruelly dashed upon arrival in the final room.
Though Room Draw is an undoubtedly unpleasant experience, the thought of leaving roomdraw lists up to the whims of a computer is strangely soothing. After all, it doesn't care whether you can dance or how good you look in a lacy bra.