In an effort to create a diverse mix of residents in the East Wheelock supercluster in the fall, the College will not select the cluster's residents based on their current housing priority numbers.
In addition to its regular housing application, ORL will provide one questionnaire which students who wish to live in the supercluster must fill out, Associate Dean of Residential Life Bud Beatty said. Incoming students wishing to live in the East Wheelock cluster will also fill out the two additional forms.
ORL will then create a pool of applicants which it considers representative of the student body and select the cluster's residents from the new pool, Beatty said.
Before Fall term, the East Wheelock cluster will undergo $600,000 in renovations and improvements, in accordance with Dean of the College Lee Pelton's supercluster proposal. A residential faculty member will live nearby and a cluster dean will be assigned to the residence halls.
The purpose of these changes to the East Wheelock cluster is to generate a "marriage of intellectual and social life at Dartmouth," Pelton previously told The Dartmouth.
Pelton said the College adopted this system because, "We feel very strongly that it is in our best interest to have students living there who are representative of student body. "
"We tried to integrate this selection process into the regular housing process with the idea that the students who live there will be representative of the student body," Pelton added.
Beatty said students often ask him what he is looking for in the questionnaire, which has four questions.
The questions ask if students will be participating in special academic programs in the following year, how they would like to integrate intellectual life into residential life, if they have special talents or experiences and "what aspects of the new residential experience in East Wheelock appeal to you the most?"
Beatty said the lottery numbers will be considered in the room assignments for students in East Wheelock after residents have been selected to live there.
Beatty said ORL has not yet determined whether students who live in East Wheelock next year will have priority to live there the following year.
"We are still discussing it," he said. "We will talk to students and decide."
Students opinions of this new housing assignment process vary.
Chris Bach '96 said he thinks this selection process is unfair. "I think it is pretty pointless," he said. "It sounds like they just want to get pretty selective as to who lives there."
"They should have normal selection process," Bach said. "We all go to Dartmouth and we should all have an equal opportunity to live there. "
But Justin Carter '99 said he supported the College's being more selective in this process.
