The words “college experience” bring many things to mind: late nights cramming at the library, crazy parties and lots of ramen. Many, however, might recall on-campus residence life.  

“Students living on campus get more connected with the university,” Dave Rozeboom, director of Residence Life, said. “Then [they] have a better differences.”

While many may agree with Rozeboom, some wonder how they are matched with their roommates.

Behind the scenes is a system called StarRez. This system is fairly new to St. Edward’s but has been utilized at more than 300 higher learning institutions. Residence Life chose StarRez for efficiency. Previously, they completed the roommate assignment process by hand.

StarRez first considers whether the student has put preference on another student. If the preferences are mutual, it is taken into consideration.

Freshman Kelly-Kate Crossland chose not to request a roommate in order to challenge herself.

“I wanted a new experience in college and new friends,” Crossland said.

Crossland and her roommate have had a great experience living together and would even compare herself and her roommate to pieces of a puzzle.

“[My roommate] and I are different shapes, but we make up a pretty sweet picture,” Crossland said.

Another major part of the selection process is the profile questions.

‘These questions include things like smoking, cleanliness, etc. as well as involvement-related interests,” Rozeboom said.

Rozeboom explained that the response matching system is more in-depth than just adding up the most matching responses.

Residence Life hopes that students have a positive roommate experience, but they will make switches if need be.

“We are generally quite pleased with how it works,” Rozeboom said. “Typically there aren’t that many students that wish to change