“THE HAS (Hall Admission Scheme) is broken right now,” president of Outdoor Adventure Club, Syed Munir, told representatives from some 30 Non-Constituent Clubs (NCC) Thursday.

The reason: too many people get nine points for campus life involvement—the highest possible. This has led to cut-off points of 14 for men and 13 for women for rooms on campus this year. In other words, students who have less than five points in distance will not make the cut-off.

“We (the NCCs) have distorted the system,” Munir said.

According to him, the large number of students from the NCCs receiving nine points had “distorted” what should be a pyramidal distribution of points for campus life involvement, with few getting nine points and the bulk getting three points.

The presidents of Outdoor Adventure Club (Odac), the Red Cross Humanitarian Network and the Spanish Society are representing the NCCs in the latest round of the HAS review.

To make his point, he cited the case of a student at the Students’ Union feedback forum held last October, who failed to get a room despite getting nine points for being active in campus activities.

Under the current scheme, management committee members of the 57 NCCs receive nine points for campus involvement, which accounts for 1,200—or two-thirds— of all students with nine points.

To fix the system, the three representatives of NCCs on the 14-member HAS implementation committee have proposed to categorise NCCs into three tiers so as to cap the number of their members receiving nine points.

Under the proposal, clubs would be categorised based on two of three criteria: number of active members, budget, and frequency and size of activities.

Only the top three or four clubs would go into tier one, getting nine points for all its management committee members.

“We do not want a tit-for-tat about which club is doing more than the other, so most clubs would end up in tier two,” Munir said. “Tier three would be for the underperforming and new clubs.”

The president and vice-president of tier two clubs would get nine and seven points, while its management committee members would get five. Points for tier three clubs would be one notch lower.

For the proposal to work out, other groups must be willing to scale down points of their sub-committee too, Munir said.

This is because with the proposal to scale down points given to NCCs, most of their management committee would be getting the same number of points as the sub-committee of the Union, Constituent Clubs and Junior Common Room Committees.

In response, Union President Choudhury Anshuman Das said he was willing to reduce 90% of Union members who are currently receiving five points to three; from 800 to 80 students. The president wants to help those “stuck at 12 points” to get a room.

However, Munir warned that the proposal may not pass through members who represent the interest of other groups on the HAS implementation committee.

“Some members are still defending their turfs,” Munir said.

He said in a separate interview: “Everybody needs to give up something to fix this system.”