For the fourth consecutive year, the University of York is facing an accommodation crisis. This year, the problem is due solely to substandard administration. There are not enough beds on campus to sleep the number of students to which the university has offered places.

Allegedly, some first year students did not receive notification of their accommodation - where exactly they were to be living - until around a week ago. This is unacceptable. A short-staffed accommodation office is not a good excuse. Frankly, it is an embarrasment, and a problem which must be rectified in time for the start of the next academic year.

Where you live at university will have an impact on how you work, how you socialise and, ultimately, how well you settle in at York. Living in a college provides students with the ideal environment in which to develop. Many freshers will be justifiably angry, therefore, to discover that they are sharing a room with a stranger when they had requested single accommodation, or that instead of living on campus - a prime reason for choosing to come to York - they have been placed in a private house miles from the university.

The University must maintain high numbers of undergraduates, especially bearing in mind the expansion to Heslington East. But the accomodation office must improve its efficiency in order that students get the welcome they deserve.

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