I’d never seen anything like it.

Voices carried down the hallways, sometimes hushed and quiet, but more often loud and panicked. The air was thick with tension. In the distance, a voice was brought to tears.

At the strike of the hour, students rushed to their laptops, clicking available icons as quickly as their fingers could manage to press the keys. In seconds, available rooms were snatched up, disappearing in a flurry of pixels before their very eyes. It felt like Thanos had made an unwelcome visit to Wake Forest to snap his fingers in our faces.  

The list of remaining rooms continued to grow smaller

70. 53. 44. 31. 24. 17. 6. Nothing.

The clock struck 7 p.m.  Students crumpled to the floor in an introspective silence of sorts — defeated or victorious, I will never know. A few leaned themselves against windows and walls to stabilize their faltering balance and steady their haggard breathing. Some huddled around their laptops, mouths hanging open in shock — repeatedly pressing the refresh button in an unbroken loop. Phones were pressed to ears, listening to words of reassurance. It was a coin flip as to whether the unseen reassuring ears received words of seething anger or elated relief.

I found myself checking the sky to see if astrology had something to do with it (it didn’t).

A lot of heads were in hands. A lot of hands were on heads.  

Accusations. Betrayal. Confusion. The ABC’s of dystopia. But what I’m describing is not the introduction to a dystopian Hunger Games-esque narrative — although that assumption isn’t too far off from the actual truth.

This is the shocking reality of the Wake Forest housing selection process. A process that started as an exciting bonding experience in January but slowly snowballed into March as chaos incarnate. Would you believe it if I told you that two months ago, I, at one point, had a co-ed roommate group of nine individuals? Well, it was actually a bit more complicated than that.

I started with a group of seven girls. We needed an eighth.  Naturally, all seven of us went on dinner dates with a new girl every night to find our eighth, to no avail. Desperate, we turn to the upperclassmen. We recruit a male upperclassman. Co-ed housing benefits amirite? Wrong. We de-recruit a male upperclassman (so long to earlier registration times) and go back to seven girls. At this point, it is just a sad dance for our eighth member with people waltzing in and out until (finally) we find a girl to stay. 

Plot twist. Two of our original group members leave — but this time it was because Wake Forest ran out of housing space for all eight of us. So now our suite is down to six. Welcome to the emotional rollercoaster we call the Wake Forest housing process.

What’s crazy, however, is the fact that my group had a relatively early housing time, but we nearly broke down to tears as we watched suites disappear before our eyes on the pixelated spreadsheet sent out by Residence Life and Housing outlining “Housing Availability.”

Raise your hand if your computer nearly crashed from the number of times you refreshed that spreadsheet! (My hand is raised and yours should be, too.)  

For some of my friends who were unfortunate enough to receive later registration times, their suites found themselves torn apart — with their friendships not far behind. 

One student jokingly posted on the social media platform Fizz saying, “My friend group will never recover from the housing crisis of ‘23.” Another Wake Forest student, putting it into perspective, mentioned to me that “After that situation, I wasn’t sure I still wanted to room with any of my friends. It really put our friend group on edge. We ended up having to pick favorites, and no one wants to do that.” 

It gets better (worse) — some students still have not received housing to this day and are waiting anxiously for the second round of housing in the summer. 

Students are frustrated and stressed. The registration process is mentally taxing and takes months of careful preparation and planning. Despite the trials and tribulations of this process, some students still have no idea where they are going to live. Surely, Wake Forest can do better than this.

At this point, the entire undergraduate class is better off pitching tents on Hearn Plaza. We could have a little campsite with cute campfires, smores and scary stories. Or we could glamp (which is, personally, much more up my alley).

So what exactly went wrong? Well, the problem is a little more complicated than a matter of a faulty registration system.

It’s a domino effect. North campus dorms, typically taken by juniors, are now filled with seniors.  Some juniors, who had expected to live on North Campus, find themselves facing another year on the Quad. Quad dorms are now filled with juniors, resulting in rising sophomores facing limited housing options. And in the case of some, no housing options at all.

One can only hope that the future of Wake Forest housing will be optimized and improved. Until then, we can laugh about all the mishaps we have along the way, as the “housing crisis of ‘23” guarantees us a lot of lasting memories.  May the odds be ever in our favor.