NYU Abu Dhabi’s Office of Residential Education has been a source of frustration for a number of students, with issues ranging from housing application glitches to a lack of student input and transparency and dissatisfaction with the Residential College A1 dorms. Yet, recent interactions have been met with positive feedback from residents, who note the increased accomodations and understanding of their requests.

“They understood my concerns. They understood what I wanted and tried their best to accommodate them,” said Juan Diego Serrano Ortega, Class of 2020. After a string of unlucky housing assignments both in Abu Dhabi and abroad, he was expecting that streak to continue when he received the assignment placing him in non-visitation housing.

“I liked the single but I was not very comfortable in a non-vis situation. So, first I talked to [my friend] and he told me that the other double [in his room] was empty. I talked to ResEd and told them hey, I’m not really happy living in non-visitation, would you be able to find a single for me, or look [my friend] has this empty double.”

The department got back to him, and within days he was settled into his new room. For students who have dealt with room changes in the past, this attitude is new. “I would not have believed that if you had told me a year ago,” said Jack Delano, Class of 2019, in response to Serrano Ortega’s story.

A quick Facebook search for ‘ResEd’ on a popular NYUAD Facebook forum entitled, Room of Requirement, brings out countless posts concerning unresponsiveness to emails, a lack of clarity on housing application deadlines and confusion over why room swaps – especially bed for bed – were not being allowed.

Delano and his roommates found themselves dealing with ResEd after returning from a study abroad in the Spring of 2018. They were surprised to find they were not assigned to the three empty rooms in their requested roommate’s suite, but rather, had been assigned elsewhere.

“I got on campus about six hours before the people who were still in Michael’s suite [whose room Delano had requested] had to check out after being there for J-Term,” explained Delano. “So because of that brief overlap, I couldn’t get access to that room, and it was technically supposed to remain empty for the entire semester.”

After three weeks of meetings and emails, the group was told they could swap if they could find students willing to replace or swap with them, which they did. “Funnily enough,” said Delano, “the room that Kirk [a roommate] ended up in was the exact room that the person who had ended up getting assigned to live with Michael, that was the room that he had wanted. So ResEd got two people totally out of order with the requests that they had.”

With stories like these, returning students this semester were more prepared for this type of challenge. Some strategically chose to request roommates staying in Abu Dhabi with single suites, others were proactive in emailing ResEd during the housing application process to make their preferences known before anything was decided.

One group, friends with Delano and his suitemates, were hoping to do the same thing he and his room had tried, moving into the three empty spots in the suite of Ria Golovakova, Class of 2020.

“All of my suitemates from fall were going to be studying away in the Spring, and three of my friends were coming back,” wrote Golovakova in a message to The Gazelle. “As such we all emailed asking for the incoming students to be placed in the suite with me.” The girls were hopeful, even though they had heard the stories from the past.

“I knew that if you were coming from a study away then you don’t really get much say in where you are placed,” said Alia Ozair, Class of 2020, and one of Ria’s suitemates. ‘I expected it, but there was also a little part of me that was anxious because it is ResEd.” When the assignments came out, the girls were not surprised to find that a mix up had occurred.

“Two of the girls were assigned to the suite as asked,” explained Golovakova, “but the third place was listed under my [previous] roommate who was studying abroad. We promptly emailed ResEd about the mistake, asking for the third friend to be placed into the suite as it was actually empty. We were quickly replied to and the situation was fixed days before we moved in.”

They were surprised at the ease and speed with which the request had been addressed; their emails had been replied to within hours. This increase in responsiveness is highlighted by other residents as well.

“This past summer, I broke my leg, so that meant that I had some special limitations, especially last semester,” said Manson Tung, Class of 2020. Coming back to NYUAD after a leave of absence due to an injury, he has noticed a clear improvement. “I needed a handrail, for example, installed in the bathroom and I would have liked a shower chair. I was also going to have to crutch down the hallway, which doesn’t sound that bad until you realize how long the hallway is in A6B if you’re at the very end of the hallway.”

He began emailing ResEd soon after his injury, near the start of August. “I would get no replies or they would be super sporadic or I would get a reply a week and a half after I sent the original inquiry, which is kind of disconcerting, especially when you’re trying to figure out... how to have a life on one leg.”

“This year, I still have some physical limitations and when I sent an email to ResED in A6B they handled it like that,” he said, adding a snap for emphasis. “I got a reply within 12 hours, asking me if I need XYZ, things that I didn’t even mention. ‘Do you need this, would it help you? Is there anything we can do to make this easier?’”For Tung, the change this semester in moving in was not only helpful, but comforting as well. “It just made you feel really great to know that the community at this school is super responsive to you,” he said.

Amal Al Shamsi, Class of 2020, and her roommates are less clear if there has been a significant improvement. They were placed into a double suite in non-visitation, and despite emailing as soon as they received their assignments in December, they got no response to their desire to switch.

“We just had to live in A5A for all of J-Term until we physically visited them multiple times when they moved us to this room,” Al Shamsi said. “Then we tried to bring it up again that this room was too small for two girls to live in, they were like ‘yeah we recognize that’.” In response to that concern, two of the suitemates were moved into another room on the same floor.

“They were doing damage control and I really appreciate that they did give them a more comfortable living situation,, but in the first place I feel like there were a lot of hiccups,” Al Shamsi added. “I just think that ResEd did really good damage control on a situation that was already damaged,” added Al Shamsi’s roommate Amal Al Murr, class of 2020. “But it wouldn’t have been if they had considered our emails that we wrote them multiple times. But I do feel like towards the end they were responding a lot more quickly.”

A lot of the praise for ResEd improvement of communication has led students to wonder if the new staff members are to thank, or if there has been an increase in staff number. Ghaniba Ali, Class of 2019 and an Resident Assistant in A1B, proposed another explanation.

“I wouldn’t say that it has something to do with ResEd internally changing, I would say it has to do with the student body becoming more aware of what they need to do in circumstances,” Ali said. “They’re more proactive with their emails, they’re filling their housing applications in on time, they’re actually reading their emails, and they’re cancelling their housing on time.”

“You have actual students who work for ResEd – I mean RAs have always worked for ResEd but RAs aren’t actually involved in the operational stuff,” explained Mubasher Iqbal, Class of 2019 and a Residential Assistant and Residential Intern. He believes student engagement and voice has also increased since the REI position began. “REIs try to make sure that when we are deciding something there is a greater input from students, because we are students ourselves so we know what concerns we have and we bring that to the table.”

Both Iqbal and Ali are quick to dispel the idea that the new staff are more responsive or accommodating of students. “This [REIs] is one of the examples that shows that the previous staff was on the same page as the current staff,” said Iqbal. “This position was started by the old R-Com... because of the feedback that we were getting for ResEd, that there should be more of a student involvement.”

Simply in terms of responsiveness, Iqbal does note that the REIs could be making a difference.

“It was a surprise when I got the job the amount of emails we get,” he said. “My inbox, if I clear it today, will have like a 100 emails tomorrow and that is during the busy days. Before, it was just a matter of numbers, the pro staff was working as hard as they could, but there is only so many emails a single person could get to. So where you had two people doing the job, now you have five to six people doing it.”

Regardless of the reasons for the increased responsiveness and accommodation of requests, some students are hopeful that this signifies a greater shift towards students’ concerns being handled efficiently and their daily residential life being more comfortable.