7/24 Weekly Update: Housing and The Forest

Bottom Line, Up Front

• Upcoming key dates or action items for families and/or students
• Room and Roommate assignments
• Mailbox number assignments
• Vehicle registration information

Dear parents and families of incoming students,

We’re coming to you with your weekly message a day late. Thank you for your patience. Your Deacs will be arriving on campus in just a few weeks. Are you getting excited?!?! We are!

Upcoming key dates or action items for families and/or students

Here’s what you should know this week.

For parents/families:

• New Deac Welcome Week 2024 (aka Orientation) schedule is live:
  • Download the New Deac Welcome Week 2024 guide or simply scan the QR code below:
    
    
  • Once you download the app and open it, in the top left menu, choose Schedule by Tracks > Parents and Families to see parent and family activities (your new students will choose the First Year or Transfer track as applicable).
• Reminder: Fall tuition is due August 1. Fall tuition and fees were billed the first week of July; this activity is visible in Workday on the Student Financials App. See this helpful job aid for Workday student financials.
  • Important: if your Deac has not made you a Third Party User yet, please encourage them to do so. It’s to their benefit to have someone else see when tuition is due! This is also what allows us to speak with you about your student’s billing details.
• Reminder of Pre-Wall Street Career track Zoom session (August 1 at 5 p.m.). The track is open to first-year students interested in exploring a career in the financial industry. Please join us by registering for the Zoom call. If you can’t make it, the session will be recorded and provided upon request (contact the Program Director, Marty Malloy, at malloym@wfu.edu).

For students:

• Project Wake is a great way for incoming first-years to make friends and discuss a book everyone wants to read! First-year students can sign up today for meaningful conversations with professors and peers!
• First-year student vehicle registration will begin Thursday, August 1, at 9:00 a.m. To register your vehicle, visit the WFU Parking Portal. See first year parking information. This website is also a great place to find information about parking during certain events like Thanksgiving, Winter Break or Spring Break.
  • PLEASE NOTE: To access the parking portal, you must specifically select your WFU Google account to login. Otherwise, you will not be able to access the portal. All other Google users must be logged out completely.
  • Vehicle Parking Information: After move-in, students should keep their vehicles on campus and park in general parking lots only until Sunday, August 25. Starting Monday, August 26 at 8:00 a.m., all first-year student vehicles will need to be in the first-year lot Z5.
• If you have a transfer student who is a sophomore, junior, or senior, see their vehicle registration information.

Room and roommate assignments

Room assignments were released today. For many students (or their parents/families), when you see their housing assignment, one of the first things you do is a Google/Instagram/X [Twitter] search for the roommate to see what you can find out about them. You may discover that this person seems to be a lot like your Deac (and that seems comforting) – or that they are quite different (which might feel disconcerting). Take a few deep breaths and remember a couple of important things:

• Students were assigned based on presumptive compatibility from the Housing and Dining Application. While families may be surprised that the Housing and Dining application only asked a few questions of students, research has shown that students with the same noise tolerance, sleep schedules, smoking preferences, and study habits tend to have positive experiences living together. We don’t ask every potential question on the housing application, only the ones that have the most influence on students’ compatibility as roommates. So help your Deac trust the matching process. A lot of what makes for a happy roommate pairing is similar ideas on how they want to use the room – not whether they share the same taste in music, agree on politics, share the same race/religion/sexual orientation/national origin, whether they think they want to be Greek, etc.
• As a reminder, room and roommate assignments are made without regard to race, religion, sexual orientation or national origin, per the University’s non-discrimination statement. We do not assign siblings as roommates.
• Part of the process of college is to expand the mind and gain new experiences – in that respect, a roommate who is very different can be a wonderful way for your student to expand their horizons.
• Nearly everyone has something on social media that is not representative of who they truly are. (Your Deac’s roommate might equally be looking at what is out on the internet about your student and having similar unfounded worries!)  Don’t put too much stake in social media posts or pictures – and instead encourage your student to spend some time trying to get to know their new roommate. The keys here are for students to foster good communication, make an effort to connect, and keep an open mind.
• It is a myth that roommates have to be best friends; peaceable coexistence is the goal (friendship on top of that is a bonus). See the expectations outlined in our Guide to Community Living.
• Parents and families, my best and most well-intentioned advice is that in matters of roommates, your best role is to be neutral like Switzerland and don’t weigh in. Allow your student and their roommate to work things out, bringing in the RA (Resident Adviser) as needed to help mediate issues once the school year begins.
• Another area of concern is that students hoped for a different assignment (e.g., they wanted a single but got a double (for awareness ~95% of our first-year housing is in double rooms), which is typically just a matter of demand exceeding supply, or wishing for a different building, etc.). Each building has its pros and cons – some rooms bigger, some renovated more recently, etc. – but they are all very liveable (in fact, I have lived in 3 of the 7 first-year halls and liked each in its own way).
• Given that we have 1,450+ students, Residence Life and Housing staff does not have the capacity to take individual room measurements for your student’s room configuration, bed/desk size, etc. Thank you for your understanding in not making those requests. However, students will receive a Roomie link with their housing assignment, which will allow them to see their room in 3D! Students are encouraged to use the platform to visualize, plan and design their room before their arrival (this is a great time for students to start connecting/collaborating with their roommates on how they’ll share their new space!) You can also visit Residence Life and Housing’s website to learn more about each building. 
• Please check with your student/get their approval before you to go to your social media/message board of choice and say “Anyone else living in Babcock 3rd floor?” Your student may have valid reasons they don’t want their living space on blast to people they don’t know, so again, ask before you post. See more recommendations for families to maintain their students’ privacy. 
• Finally, I’d urge patience and understanding that students’ room assignments will not be changed (either to a new hall or a new roommate), so your students (or you!) should not ask Residence Life and Housing for changes. Instead, students should focus on getting to know their roommate and embracing their new community.
• Pro tip: families and students will want to learn about the role of the RA (Resident Adviser).

Mailbox assignments

• Student mailbox numbers will be assigned around August 1 and will be available in Workday. Students will need to:
  • Log into Workday
  • Click their profile picture in the top right corner
  • Select ‘View Profile’
  • Select ‘Personal’. It should populate two addresses: 1) their on-campus address with their mailbox number, and 2) their home address.
• You can find how to address mail or packages to students on our Mail Services website.
  • NOTE: Depending on whether you use US Mail or FedEx/UPS/DHL, there are two different zip codes, 27109 and 27106, respectively. This is not a typo. There are two zip codes depending on the carrier. Please follow the formats given on the Mail Services website.
• Determine whether you will ship items to campus. If so, please allow enough time for any packages to be sent to campus in time for move-in. Please note: due to traffic and parking issues on Move-in Day, no deliveries can be made on Wednesday, August 21. 

Parting thoughts

We’ll be back next week with our regularly-scheduled message for incoming families. In case you missed last week’s message, you can view our archive here.

With best wishes,

Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (‘92, MA ‘94)
Executive Director of Family Communications