The Office of Residence Life, which oversees Oberlin’s student housing, has announced several changes to the existing housing system. Among the most significant changes is a move to limit eligibility for living in on-campus houses and apartments (formerly known as Village Housing) to students who have completed six semesters, as well as limiting eligibility for Woodland Hall to those who have completed four semesters or more.

Melanie Hawkins, ResLife’s director of residential engagement, noted that the changes are part of a larger shift to a housing system in which a student’s cohort determines where they will live.

“We also are moving toward a more formalized residential curricular approach incorporating a residential cohort model where students move together by class cohorts to more independent living environments as they complete more semesters at Oberlin,” Hawkins wrote in an email to the Review. “To accommodate this, we adjusted the criteria for certain housing, like on-campus houses and apartments, that will accommodate housing for rising seniors.”

Other changes in the housing system include shifting the housing application process for incoming first-years to an earlier date. These changes are intended to encourage prospective students to apply during the Early Decision period instead of waiting until the Regular Decision deadline in May to commit.

College third-year Rory Gielty stated that the changes are related to Oberlin College’s problems with providing housing to all students, noting that there have been many instances where students were left without clear knowledge of where they would be living after the housing lottery.

“I feel like those are the kind of problems that they were probably hoping to avoid by building a new 400-person dorm, and they’re not really delivering,” Gielty said. “I would say that probably no one is very satisfied with this outcome. I don’t want to say that it all could have been avoided, but [they’ve] barely [had] Woodland for one year, and [they’re] already changing the rules of who can live there for no reason other than … ‘we’re running out of space, and we can’t promise it to everyone who we said it [was for].’”

Hawkins acknowledged that previous issues with insufficient housing were a significant factor in moving to a more cohort-focused housing system, noting that there were more first-year students admitted last year than there were places for them to live in designated first-year dorms. As a result of this, the College plans on making changes in order to avoid a similar problem from occurring during the fall 2026 semester, with an increased focus on providing housing for first-years that places them with other members of their cohort. 

As part of these adjustments, South Hall will be converted to a first-year dorm for the 2026–27 academic year in order to increase the amount of housing options available for incoming students. The limitation of Woodland Hall and off-campus housing to third-, fourth-, and fifth-years is thus intended to counteract this shift, with upperclassmen having fewer people to compete with for these housing options. South Hall will also be home to a new PRAX Hall, an area of the dorm specifically intended for incoming students in the new B.A./B.F.A. integrated arts program.

College second-year Grey Papageorgiou noted that the limitation of Woodland Hall specifically to upperclassmen would be controversial in light of perceived differences in the quality of housing between dorms on campus.

“I imagine that a lot of people who aren’t third- and fourth-years would be opposed to Woodland [Hall] being an exclusively third- and fourth-year dorm because it is one of the nicer dorms, and a lot of other dorms are not well-maintained,” she said. “There [are] a lot of problems with [the] bathrooms, hygiene, and cleanliness [at other dorms], and I know that’s not an issue [at Woodland Hall].” 

ResLife has also made the change to allow students applying to Living Learning Communities to choose a specific room within the space, as opposed to being randomly assigned. These changes are intended to resolve past problems with room locations and roommate pairings. ResLife is also currently holding several open houses for LLCs in order to allow students to explore their options and recruit those interested in living in such spaces.