Florida A&M University housing applications for the 2023-2024 academic school year have opened for all returning students.
As a returning student, these applications are nothing new. Or is it?
As students recently found out, a new housing portal system has been implemented. The housing portal has some new and updated changes to it.
Once students log in, they have the essential information to fill out, such as name, number, and address. All critical documents are necessary. It is only when the room selections part that things get more precise.
The new portal has a fresh look where it asks about the preference of the dorm the students want to live in. The new system in play raises some eyebrows across the university.
In earlier housing applications, students could pick the dorm, room, space, and floor they desired to live in. The new housing portal only partially guarantees that students will be placed in the corresponding room they were assigned.
All it guarantees is that they have voiced their preferences on living arrangements. Freshman Jasmine Edwards expressed her concerns about the new portal system.
“I do not like the new process of the portal this year compared to last, there is no confirmation on whether you will have a room, just confirmation saying you completed it,” Edwards said.
This shows that the latest changes to the portal do not give you an exact plan on where students may be placed in the upcoming academic year.
Opposed to some concerns, FAMU student Terrell Shealy had a great viewpoint on the importance of the latest changes.
“As a whole, the new housing portal is just a better-structured way of placing kids since the surplus of incoming and returning students without another revamp of a housing crisis,” Shealy said.
This is because last year’s housing was so packed that availability was scarce for first-year students to select housing. The lack of dorm rooms available, left some to sit out a semester or find an alternative housing plan.
Now that the housing portal is up and running, the new preference suggestion is to have each person give housing a wish list of where they want to stay. In this case, it does not mean it is confirmed.
Kevin Littles, a transfer student hoping to live in the housing apartments, gives his thoughts on the portal.
“I think there should be a better system to select where to stay and with whom because there was an outage on the housing portal, and right now, I cannot sign up for the dorms,” Little said.
This shows the confusion about how the new system works and how the off-campus ties into the new portal.
Besides the questions and concerns returning students may have as this portal is newly updated for everyone and still getting the hang of.
As the next school year is slowly approaching, the changed housing portal is, in fact, an implementation of how FAMU housing is going about the future of students entering the dorm room experience.
Follow @famuhousing1887 on all social media platforms and their official housing website to stay updated on new housing developments.