Students have raised a number of questions about how the new housing community system will work when it rolls out this fall. While current students found out which house community they were in last Friday at Founders Day, in the future, classes will be notified of their house community soon after accepting their place at the College.
During their first year, students will live on a first-year floor with fellow members of their designated house, Dean of the College Rebecca Biron said, though multiple houses will be represented in one building. Undergraduate advisors that live on first-year floors will be assigned to first-year students who are in the same house as them. After sophomore year, students will live within their housing communities.
Alternatively, students can live off-campus or in living learning communities. Aside from freestanding LLCs, all other LLCs will be placed in the McLaughlin Cluster, which contains around 300 beds, senior assistant dean of residential life Mike Wooten said.
Additionally, over sophomore summer, students living on campus will not be required to live in their housing community, Wooten said. Just as before, students will live within three to four open residence halls.
Not every house community will be open over sophomore summer because the College already has plans for renovations as well as camps and conferences that will use some of the dorms, Wooten said. House professors will still be engaged with event planning through the summer, he added.
Students returning from abroad programs will search for housing within their community using priority numbers. Just as before, seniors will still be given priority, then juniors, then sophomores.
One challenge to the new housing system has been the number of beds in each house community, Wooten said, though he is sure that everyone will be able to get a bed. He added that when grouping halls together into housing communities, D-Plans and where students like to live was taken into account.
Allen House includes Gile, Streeter and Lord Halls. East Wheelock House includes Andres, Zimmerman, McCulloch and Morton Halls. North Park House includes Ripley, Woodward and Smith Halls. School House includes Massachusetts Row and Hitchcock Hall. South House includes the Lodge, Topliff and New Hampshire Halls. West House includes Fahey, McLane, Butterfield and Russell Sage Halls.
Wooten said that generally speaking, there will still be the same amount of singles and doubles across a housing community.
“We worked very hard on that. We knew there needed to be some sense of equity if you’re randomly assigned to one house or another, that you could expect a similar types of room in your graduated experience of living in a house,” he said.
Biron said that the planning process of deciding which buildings belonged to what communities also took account of the amount of social spaces per community, such as common rooms and study spaces.
“That required some extra work and some extra building. Which is why the two house centers are being built,” she said.
Wooten also said that there would be substance free housing within each house community.
At Founders Day, last Friday held in Baker-Berry Library, students met their house professors, signed a leather-bound book and received house-themed scarves and t-shirts.
Biron said that the estimated cost of Founders Day was $100,000, however all bills have not been accounted for yet.
“It was a substantial percentage of the money that the president dedicated to the roll-out process,” Biron said. “We will be using some more of that money in the fall when we have the official opening of the actual running of the houses.”
Biron added that many people, especially students in working groups, volunteered a large amount of time to help plan the governance structures and define what a “membership” in a housing community would look like.
Biron, Wooten, Allen House professor Jane Hill, North Park House professor Ryan Calsbeek and West House professor Ryan Hickox all felt that Founders Day was a success.
“There was palpable positive energy. More than a thousand students came to Baker-Berry,” Biron said.
Biron added that she observed lots of students finding and speaking with friends or classmates in their house.
“I saw a lot of people celebrating that and talking to the house professors,” Biron said. “I was really kind of surprised that I was moved.”
Hill said it was really fun to hear people get excited about people living in their houses and start to already hear gentle rivalries between houses.
“I think [Founders Day] went pretty well,” Hill said. “I don’t think we oversold expectations and I think students were pleasantly surprised by the way it was done, especially for the students who worked on the committee.”
Calsbeek said that though the administration had reason to be hesitant about the way people would perceive the event, Founders Day was a “wild success.” He added that there is still a lot of information that has yet to be disseminated to students.
Hickox said that he was tentatively concerned because he thought students were still uncertain about the details of the system and may not be enthusiastic. The event, however, allowed student to see the new system as a “fairly big deal,” which promoted them to want to find out more.
Hickox said he has already started to meet with students interested in forming a working group to figure out the house governance structure.
In terms of facilitating interaction, Calsbeek said that students and house professors will be responsible. He said that at his house dinner he heard a lot of ideas for possible house events such as stargazing at the Second College Grant or having a plot at the Dartmouth Organic Farm. He said that a group of sophomore women had expressed interest in going to the shooting range and learning how to shoot shotguns.
Amanda Zhou is a junior at Dartmouth College originally from Brookline, Massachusetts. She’s previously been the associate managing editor, health and wellness beat writer at the Dartmouth and interned at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this Fall. She is pursuing a major in quantitative social science and a minor in public policy. At college, she edits the campus newspaper, serves on the campus EMS squad and lives in the sustainable living center. After graduation, she is interested in a career in journalism or data analysis. In her spare time, she can be found running, cooking or trying to rock climb.
