College houses sys. enters second year

Patchogue-Medford High School '98 Patchogue, N.Y. The program -- designed by officials in the Office of College Houses and Academic Services to provide more diverse living opportunities and access to academic resources on campus for all students -- consolidated the University's dormitories into 12 multi-year college houses last summer. The changes mean students of all years now live in every dorm as administrators attempt to foster a more community-oriented living experience. Administrators also hope that more students will choose to live on-campus, especially with the ongoing $300 million campus renovation plan, which will add approximately 870 beds to the 5,300 currently in the housing system. Traditionally, the Quadrangle -- which today consists of four college houses, soon to be consolidated into three -- Hill College House and Kings Court/English College House have been filled primarily with freshmen while the three high rises and other dormitories have been predominately filled by upperclassmen. "This will be a more realistic community," Director of College Houses and Academic Services David Brownlee said when the plan was announced in October 1997. "In the real world one lives with people of different ages." Each college house is staffed with a house dean, a faculty master and at least one faculty fellow. The college house plan brought with it a similar number of undergraduate residential advisors and doubled number of graduate advisors in the houses compared to the former system. RAs and GAs help residents with housing issues, provide support to students and plan social events. Each student is assigned a GA, an RA or both to provide information about the resources available and to generate programming that will foster a sense of community in the houses. An important goal of the college house system is to facilitate student access to academic resources focused into three areas -- writing, mathematics and computing support. "[Penn] has a myriad of high-quality resources to enrich the college experience for every student on campus, but many students do not take full advantage of them," Ware College House Dean Katherine Becht said at the system's inception last summer. "I believe the college house system will make these resources easier to navigate and more accessible." Officials learned shortly after the program's inception that the fact that students are living in the same building doesn't mean they're necessarily interacting with one another. A survey conducted by the Undergraduate Assembly -- Penn's main student government body -- showed that freshmen living in the Quad reported an average happiness level of 6.2 on a scale from 1 to 10 while those living in the high rises reported an average of only 4.9. Freshmen living in the high rises this year said that while they enjoyed the amenities of apartment-style living -- including separate bathrooms and kitchens -- they were disappointed with the overall quality of social life there. As a result of the UA survey, college house officials agreed to include information in this year's housing brochures about the class composition of each residence. UA members said the new brochures will give incoming freshmen a better idea of what each college house is really like, both structurally and socially. And although a survey conducted by The Daily Pennsylvanian in December -- a semester into the new system -- indicated only 21 percent of students value community atmosphere as the most important reason to live on campus, officials said that number will increase as the system becomes more firmly established. The DP survey also showed that few students were having much interaction with their house's faculty master, faculty fellow or house dean. While room retention rates for next year are not yet available, preliminary figures show many upperclassmen will be remaining in the traditionally freshman dorms, according to faculty and student staff members in the Quadrangle.

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