When filling out applications for housing this year, freshmen, for the first time in Dartmouth history, had the option of choosing between not two but three different types of housing.
In previous years, first-year students could choose between regular housing and the Butterfield Alcohol and Drug-Free Affinity Housing.
Students who opted not to select Butterfield housing were randomly placed in one of the College's 28 other dormitories.
Now, thanks to an experiment aimed at better integrating intellectual and social life at the College, the East Wheelock Cluster, otherwise known around campus as "the New Dorms," can also be selected as an alternative affinity housing.
Twenty-one freshmen have been randomly selected out of 78 applicants to live in Butterfield, Associate Dean of Residential Life Beatty said. Last year, 21 students from the class of 1999 were selected out of over 100 applications. Thirty-four upperclassmen live in Butterfield.
Meanwhile, '00's were the first students to have the option of applying to live in the East Wheelock cluster, and several chose to do so.
Five hundred and sixteen students indicated interest in living in East Wheelock and 135 were randomly selected, Beatty said. An additional 100 upperclassmen will live in the East Wheelock cluster.
Sociology Professor and Dean of the East Wheelock Cluster Steven Cornish said the East Wheelock Cluster "is a new style of housing and residential life at Dartmouth and we hope the students will get a lot out of it."
The cluster will have two senior faculty associates living in a nearby house and History Professor Leo Spitzer and his wife, French Professor Marianne Hirsch will be on-call 24 hours a day.
"The senior faculty associates and myself as dean will try to mold a community there by having a close association with the students and getting to know them and their interests," Cornish said.
