After three and a half years in A1A, Jade Des Eñor, Class of 2023, was ready to graduate to the upperclassmen housing community.

In anticipation of housing registration on Monday night, Des Eñor sent automated rejection messages to the eighty two underclassmen who asked to join her roommate group; charged her Macbook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone 14, and iPhone XR to get ahead of device crashes; took her sixth P.E. class, Muay Thai, to speed up her reaction time; and filtered her housing portal to request “anything but A1.”

But to her dismay, when she refreshed her housing page at 18:59:58 pm Monday night, she was met with a dreaded banner.

“I couldn’t choose a room until I expanded my search to include A1,” lamented Des Eñor. “As a super senior, this was my only shot to escape the swarm of ‘where are you from’ and ‘what’s your intended major’ that I am attacked with when entering my building elevator in the fall semesters.”

“I didn’t even get to choose my building,” ranted Ove Rhit, Class of 2024. “I logged into my portal and was given two room options — A1C 304 and 402.”

One thousand and eighty two students found themselves future residents of the A1 community for the 2023-2024 academic year. When asked how this situation came to be, Fuhm Belle Ditupp, Director of Undergraduate Housing, cleared the air.

“We used a new, state-of-the-art in-house AI software to renovate the housing registration system,” explained Dittup. “Initially, it wanted to move all students to the A1 community. Naturally we couldn’t do that: after our Covid-19 era experiment of randomly assigning housing failed, we had to provide students with the illusion of choice. So we randomly assigned a small selection of students access to other residential communities.”

The decision to indiscriminately adopt the AI’s system did not go without meticulous planning on the institution’s part.

“NYU Abu Dhabi recently asked if we could add ten new floors to three buildings this July,” said Watt Dahec, Senior Architect of Buldd Co, bemused. “Unfortunately, that is quite impossible.”

The housing department was ready to adapt to the further unprecedented circumstances with the aid of student labor.

“In collaboration with the campus spaces committee, we have decided to make the following changes to A1 residential buildings,” said Dumso Lucion, Undergraduate Housing Coordinator. “Twin beds will be replaced with two bunk beds a room, floor lounges will be converted into twelve-student dormitories, and bed-sized glass soundproof booths will be installed through all remaining hall and laundry spaces.”

“We recognize students have concerns about this constantly unfolding situation,” added Ditupp. “These fixes are all very temporary, we are working toward long term solutions that satisfy both the community and the AI holding the housing system hostage.”

Until then, some students did find themselves content by the outcome of this year's housing process.

“I was recently reassigned to a laundry room single,” said Lan Driestollen, Class of 2025. “Now I can watch my laundry from the comfort of my room, assured that it’ll never get stolen again!”