The Office of Residential Life announced a new optional process that will allow students to transfer into a different residential House Community in an email sent to all undergraduate students last month. Students who opted into the process will be randomly reassigned to a different House Community individually or as a part of a group of friends who wish to live in the same community together, according to the email. The application period ran from Feb. 2 through Feb. 10.
Dartmouth offers six residential House Communities that each undergraduate student remains in during their time at Dartmouth. These Houses include a cluster of dorm buildings, often in a common location, promoting “intellectual engagement, community and continuity” through “opportunities for enhanced social ties and shared experiences in the residential system,” according to the Office of Residential Life website.
In an email statement to The Dartmouth, Residential Life associate dean Stacey Millard said about 150 students from across all Houses Communities applied for the process “in groups of different sizes.”
“That number is about what we expected for a new option like this,” Millard wrote. “Most applicants were first-year students, along with some sophomores and a small number of juniors and seniors.”
Miller added that the process came after the office received feedback from students who wanted “more flexibility to live with friends in other Houses.”
According to the Office of Residential Life website, students cannot give preference for the house they wish to transfer to “given space limitations and to ensure a manageable number of students in each House.” The process can only be done once to maintain “continuity of membership” in the House Communities.
Parama Viprakasit ’27, who is in Allen House, said he applied for the House transfer option to find “community” and to have the ability to live in different dorms. He said Allen House is the only house community in the House system without “a new, renovated dorm.”
“Especially as a rising senior, I want to be able to get to live [in a renovated dorm] for once … rather than be stuck in Allen House, or to be stuck in an old dorm,” he said. “I have nothing to lose by switching out.”
Viprakasit added that he would have transferred Houses earlier if the process had been offered in previous years.
“I feel like I would have done it, just because most of my friends are in different houses,” he said.
