Room Ballot 2010

The following is a brief outline of how room selection day will proceed:

On Friday the 7th May (for current second years) or Friday 14th May (for current first years) the JCR will notify people of their place in the random draw, without the full draw being made public. This e-mail will also tell you of your allocated time to choose you room on the Sunday.

On room selection day (Sunday 9th May for current second years, Sunday 16th May for current first years), each person will be given a slot of 2 minutes in which to come to the Angevin Room to make their selection. The end time of the 2 minutes allocated is the time by which you MUST have selected your room. Failure to choose a room by this time (be it due to indecisiveness or not turning up) will forfeit your place in the ballot. For pairs sharing a set, you must turn up together to select your room.

E-mails will be sent out to people as soon as their turn to choose a room comes around (ie. when the person immediately before them has chosen) as well as when the person 10 places before them has chosen. This earlier e-mail is to provide an early warning of when your turn is approaching and to allow us to take advantage if the selection runs ahead of schedule.

In the event that the ballot does run ahead of schedule (ie. people don’t need the full 2 minutes to make their selection) then subsequent people on the list will still have up to the original time deadline allocated (and hence could end up with more than the 2 minutes to make their selection) though if they also do not choose to make use of the extra time the selection process will continue to get ahead of schedule.

Throughout the day there will be a list of available rooms in the Angevin room and online at the Queens' Quarters site that is continually updated.

Obviously, in order to make your room selection in good time, you need to have a very good idea of the exact rooms you are interested in. To this end, the Queens’ Quarters site currently has a room shopping function set up whereby you can add rooms that you are interested in to a ‘shopping basket’ and also see how many people are interested in each room (though not which people). This is to aid in generating a list of rooms that you can take along on room selection day in order to ease the choice when under time constraints.

Queens’ Quarters also has a lot of information regarding individual rooms (size, storage etc) filled in by previous occupants. However, please note that the rents are the 2007/08 rents. The prospective rents will be shown on the list when you make you room choice. I'm currently trying to get them updated in time for the ballot

The actual rents for 2010/11 will be determined by applying a percentage uplift to the rents for the current year. This percentage uplift will be decided by the Charges Committee in June. The room prices on display around the College are also this years rents and will be subject to the percentage increase as well

So what you need to do:
-Make sure your sharing preference forms are handed in by 4pm Tuesday 4th May (current second years) or 4pm Tuesday 11th May (current first years)
- Get a list of rooms that you would like to select (or at least have a very good idea when you show up to decide). Queens’ Quarters can help in this, but you should still ask the current residents how they have found the room and maybe have a look at them.
- Check your e-mail on Friday the 7th May (for current second years) or Friday 14th May (for current first years) to obtain your time for room selection – don’t forget this time!
- Check your e-mail throughout the day on Sunday 9th May (for current second years) or Sunday 16th May (for current first years) for warning e-mails that your time to choose is approaching
- If you are unable to show up on the allocation day, then appoint a proxy to act on your behalf (he/she must bring a letter of authorisation signed by you)
- If a suitable proxy cannot be found, then the JCR President will be able to act on your behalf. The Financial Office must receive your written authorisation for this by 9am on Friday 7th May / 14th May.
- Turn up at your allocated time on Sunday 9th / 16th and select you room for next year.

Phew!