I am currently a sophomore EE major at Caltech. I am also a member of Ruddock house, though I no longer live there as Caltech is one of those stubborn institutions that will not take that first step and admit that it has a problem. Caltech's problem is that they do not have enough on-campus undergraduate housing for the people who want to live in it. Actually they do not have enough undergraduate housing in general. Every year students are forced by low lottery picks to search the area for their own living arrangements. While many students want to get their own appartment, most would rather stay in the on-campus houses, but are forced out because of lack of space. I am one of the lucky ones who got space in Caltech owned housing, but I know people who fell through. And even now, as they finally build a new "on-campus" house (which is further off-campus than some of the off-campus houses) they decide to set aside more than 50% of it for graduate students. I personally believe that graduate students, being older and more experienced, are better qualified to find their own appartments than undergraduate sophomores, but then I'm just a young, inexperienced sophomore. What do I know?
A-life is fun: it's to stupid to be bureaucratic. Or repressive.