It’s an open secret at Georgetown and it’s an unhappy reality for a few hundred incoming Hoyas every year. Transfer students are treated like second-class students by the University and something has to be done about it.
As the situation stands now, incoming transfer students are housed in a motley mess of leftover spots. One wide-eyed sophomore from Rutgers might get lucky and end up somewhere like VCE 3, a floor that was almost entirely transfers this year … or she might get thrown into an empty bed in an almost-full Henle. Nothing could sour a first-year transfer’s experience more than being the odd one out in an apartment full of best friends. Nobody wants to be that rando.
There are a few simple things that wouldn’t require much effort from the University that would better the experiences of every transfer. Most importantly, Georgetown should at least designate a few floors in the Southwest Quad, VCE or Copley as transfer floors. This step should be pretty easy if the people in charge of housing are willing to put in a few hours of extra work. I’m not asking the University to build a brand new dorm for transfers, but since they’re already building the Northeast Triangle, why not house transfers there? I can’t think of a reason not to. It would be much more appealing to prospective transfers than the possibility of living in an LXR basement room with an unenthusiastic senior roommate.
“I think it made it harder to feel a part of a close-knit community that a hall environment sometimes offers,” said Margaret Stebbins (COL ‘15), a transfer from Davidson College, of her experience living in Henle. “I didn’t have an easily accessible group of people at the beginning to go to Leo’s with when it was dinnertime or to just hang out with.”
The University already puts a lot of effort into helping out transfers. I’ve never felt at a loss for resources. There are even separate New Student Orientation (NSO) events for transfers. They had a transfer-only cruise on the Potomac last August. A cruise. But the reality is that for most transfers, NSO just isn’t meaningful.
“Honestly, no one showed up to my NSO,” said Helen Sprainer (SFS ’16), who transferred from the University of Rochester last fall. “Everyone was like, ’fuck this, we’ve done college before.’ We didn’t need to sit through an orientation that said not to drink and how to get your homework done. … I’d say living with other transfers would be much more important than an orientation no one takes seriously.”
Jamil Hashmi (COL ’16), who left Hamilton College for Georgetown, agreed. “I did NSO with these people, and then I never saw them again, because I didn’t know where they lived. I have one friend from NSO, and that’s because she was on my ESCAPE trip,” he said. “I don’t think NSO was effective because transfers weren’t a unified group. I told a representative for Trevor and Omika that they should have transfers living together on the same floors… I think that the biggest issue with the transfer experience is that we don’t live together.”
It’s not just the housing assignment process that’s working against transfers. The roommate selection process is pretty bad as well—because there isn’t one. Transfers are the only students on campus who can’t choose their roommate. There’s absolutely no reason why CHARMS can’t be modified to accommodate incoming transfers along with freshmen. I know Georgetown isn’t so strong in computer science, but come on. The administration can do this.
“I think that if I had CHARMS available, I wouldn’t have matched with my current roommate and I probably would have had a better time this year,” said Hashmi.
GUSA’s new Vice President Omika Jikaria agrees. She’s pushing to reconvene the GUSA Transfer Committee as an advocacy organization for first-year transfers.
“A major part of the Transfer Council is making it so that there is a way for incoming transfer students to select their roommate,” she said.
Transfers are just as special as other Georgetown students. For 2012, the last year on record, the transfer acceptance rate was 13 percent. Transfers aren’t leftover students, and they shouldn’t be getting leftover housing. The University should acknowledge the transfer community’s place at Georgetown by making housing decisions that take into account the well-being of their students. For now, unfortunately, it looks like transfers will continue to deal with the worst housing options the University has to offer.
