By Michael GsovskiThe Daily Northwestern
Incoming Weinberg freshman George Bajalia knows what he wants in a dorm.
“I don’t really want a party dorm,” said Bajalia. “I want my dorm to be somewhere where I can go and listen to music and be with whatever friends I make.”
For dorm information, Bajalia looked at Northwestern’s Web site, Facebook.com, Google and college guidebooks, but he also came across a little-known resource: DTECs.
DTECs, an online dorm evaluation system created by Associated Student Government and named after NU’s CTEC course evaluation system, were designed to help new students make more informed housing choices. DTECs were started in spring 2003 but were discontinued a little over a year later in summer 2004.
Personal experience inspired former ASG Sen. Jason Lake, Weinberg ’04, to spearhead the DTECs project.
“I was looking for a quiet dorm, and one of the dorms as I was looking at was Bobb-McCulloch. I thought, ‘That sounds good,'” Lake said. “I only learned (that it was a party dorm) when I came to Northwestern.”
The bill passed quickly, ensuring that DTECs would be available for the following year’s housing lottery. The Web site launched in trial form in February 2003. Though up to 80 percent of students at some dorms filed responses, only a few students responded from other dorms. Results were available for the 2004 housing lottery.
The program ended the next year. Gabe Matlin, a former ASG system administrator, said residents took the survey in the spring, but results were lost in a database crash. Later that year, NU changed its database system and denied ASG automatic access to students’ addresses due to privacy concerns.
“We needed the addresses to verify that people actually lived in the dorms they were reviewing,” said Matlin, McCormick ’05. “We were concerned that people would post stuff about places they didn’t live that they either really liked or really hated. Those results would not be useful.”
The administration cited the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act when it denied ASG access to the database, Matlin said. FERPA places limits on how educational institutions can distribute students’ personal information.
“FERPA is very restrictive,” said NU Vice President for Information Technology Mort Rahimi. “We can’t give away any information about you without your consent, even to your parents. That’s the law of the land.”
Matlin described the administration’s interpretation as “overly conservative.” The U.S. Department of Education’s Web site on FERPA states: “Schools may disclose, without consent, ‘directory’ information, such as a student’s name, address (or) telephone number.”
ASG has not made any attempts to resurrect the DTECs. But Weinberg senior Leah Witt, ASG’s student services vice president said ASG might reconsider if students showed interest.
The first and only group of DTEC results are still online at asg.northwestern.edu/services/dtecs/. The page lists the 2002-03 results, displaying numerical values in categories such as “quality of social atmosphere” and “quality of furniture,” along with student comments.
Despite the age of the evaluations, Bajalia, who is considering Allison Hall and Chapin Hall, said the site was useful.
“It was much more helpful than pretty much anything else I had found,” Bajalia said. “I don’t just want to read all the great things about the dorm, I want to read the negative things too, to get a real feel for it.”
Reach Michael Gsovski at [email protected].
