When invited to live off-campus this year, Ty Moddelmog '08 immediately jumped at the chance. Like many seniors, Moddelmog has taken the opportunity to spend his last year at Dartmouth living in a house with a close network of friends.
"My friend found the house and invited a great group, and I wanted to be part of it," he said. "The experience has been overwhelmingly positive."
Many upperclassmen living off-campus this year have had similarly enjoyable experiences, finding that living off campus provides them with social, academic and practical benefits.
"It really has been a dream come true. We all love it," Liz Kolleeny '08 said.
Living off campus with a group of self-selected people gives students an opportunity to share a previously unparalleled level of community at Dartmouth, Moddelmog said, comparing the experience to living on a freshman floor. Like it did during his first year at the College, Moddelmog's social life now revolves around his floormates. This time, however, he was able to choose who lives down the hall.
Katherine Michelis '08 said she also values the opportunity to live amongst her friends.
"There is definitely more of a feel of community living off-campus as opposed to the dorms," she said. "I've chosen who I'm living with, and it's really nice to be able to come home in the evenings to a house full of my friends. We're like a little family."
For some students, this increased feeling of community has decreased the attraction of fraternity basements.
"It's a nice alternative to the frat scene, you can have people over and hang out and relax," Kolleeny said. "It's still early, but I think that I will end up spending a lot more time both at my house and other people's houses instead of frats."
Despite the benefits to off-campus partying, some students are eager to maintain a connection to the traditional Dartmouth social scene.
"We have our own pong table in the yard, which we inherited," Michelis said. "It's really nice to be able to play whenever you want, and to not have to wait. I guess we've stayed in a little more as a result of that. We can also throw our own parties now, which we've already done. But we still want to make an effort to party on campus."
It is this desire to maintain a connection to campus that deterred Sophie Pauze '08 and her roommates from purchasing their own pong table.
"We all love it there so much that we need a lure to leave the house," she said. "We need to make an effort to get to Frat Row. We are going to throw our own parties, though. We want to have one of those really big high school house parties. It's really cool that we can do that now."
Moddelmog and his friends split their nights between the on and off-campus scenes.
"We've thrown parties, but they've pretty much been pre-parties," he said. "We all get together and have a good time, and then we go out."
Others highlighted the academic dividends of living off campus.
"It's made college a lot less of a grind for me," Pauze said. "The end of the day is really the end of the day, since we're far from campus and the library. You have your own space."
Residents of off-campus houses also hope the experience will translate after graduation.
"It offers a reasonable segue into the real world next year," Smith said. "I pay more attention to things like lights being on and water running and things like that. It's funny how having to pay for it changes your perspective."
Kolleeny agreed.
"It's like living with training wheels," she said.
Despite the new responsibilities that come with living off campus, Kolleeny said, the overall experience has been positive.
"I 100 percent recommend living off campus," she said. "Buying your own toilet paper and paper towels is totally worth having your own space and time schedule."
