Blog Post Due 10/30 Conflict Resolution

As president of the Evans House, there are plenty of conflicts between housemates that need resolving. One that comes to mind would be a conflict over rooming. One specific rooming issue was between two groups of girls fighting over the bigger room. The way rooming is done in our house is first by year in school, seniors getting first choice, followed by GPA. This process can get dicey when you have students with different years living together, as well as when you have students who are only living in the house for a semester due to study abroad or coops. The two sides of the conflict and their arguments are as follows:

·      Team one: this group consisted of three senior girls. From their perspective, because they were all seniors and had endured poor rooming in the past because of their age in the house. In addition to that, all three of them would be staying in the room for both semesters.

·      Team two: this group consisted of two seniors, one junior, and one sophomore. This group’s argument was because they had 4 people for a semester that they should receive the room, and that had they known that this room was smaller, they would have chosen the bigger one. However, one of the seniors and the sophomore will not be living in the house next semester. 

Team two brought a compromise to the table, stating that if they got the larger room first semester, they would happily switch to the smaller room second semester. However, this was declined by team one as they said the hassle was not worth the larger room for only one semester as moving rooms is stressful and something completely avoidable.

The solution I came up with was a mathematical one. Each girl was assigned a point value established by their GPA multiplied by their year in school (4 for senior, 3 for junior, and 2 for sophomore) multiplied by how many semesters they will be in the in the house (1 or 2). Then I added all the numbers of the team members together and whoever had the higher number would receive the larger room. Before I calculated the number, I offered team one to see if they did receive the smaller room, would they want to switch mid semester and once again they declined. In the end, team one had the higher total and they got the larger room. Although it was resolved, to this day the people in the smaller room do not talk to me. This problem may have been avoided if everyone had perfect information. Had both teams know the size of each room beforehand, maybe they could have figured it out civilly amongst themselves, although judging form team two’s reaction to me after all of this, I doubt it.