Up from the copy community

Penn faces a perpetual identity crisis. It prides itself on being a pioneer in so many fields -- the first medical school, the first business school, the first computer -- and naturally, being a pioneer requires innovation. Despite all of its groundbreaking ideas, however, Penn has never held back from mimicking its "competition" in New Haven, Conn. and Cambridge, Mass. Unfortunately, Penn has proven a lot better at invention than imitation. Three years after the implementation of the college house system here at Penn, the flaws continue to become more apparent -- and many of these flaws come from the poor, rushed adaptation of decades-old systems that exist at our sister institutions. The College House system is itself an amalgamation of the housing systems at Harvard and Yale. In Cambridge, freshmen live in one of 17 dorms on or around Harvard Yard, and then apply and move into one of 12 upper-class residences, where most remain for the rest of their undergraduate careers. In New Haven, freshmen are randomly assigned to a residential college, where they remain for all four years. In their first year, however, most students live in the all-freshman Old Campus. Unlike Penn's more traditional housing style, the systems at Harvard and Yale provided students with a constant center for their social and academic lives. So, in a noble move to offer students more support services, greater academic resource and more social options, Penn initiated its college house program in 1998. In theory, the college house program -- along with the 10-year housing and dining renewal initiative -- would significantly alter the way students at Penn perceived on-campus living. But while on-campus housing has increased in popularity since then, it might not be for the same reasons that the University initially intended. Penn failed to realize that the success of the Harvard and Yale programs relied on those schools' abilities to provide beds for almost the entire undergraduate population. Most students at Harvard and Yale choose to live on campus for all four years of their undergraduate stay, and the universities provide space for all those students. However, as the last several years have proven, Penn can barely house all the undergraduates that want spaces in our program. Additionally, many students don't get their preferred choices for residence. Realistically, this means that the college house system only works when students are enthusiastic and want to participate. Furthermore, both of our rival schools provide predominantly all-freshman housing, and this serves as the linchpin for their systems. Penn, by contrast, has turned toward integrating students of all four years into each residence. Although exposing freshmen to older, more experienced perspectives remains a valid idea, the essential freshman experience that comes with living in an all-first-year dorm is irreplaceable. And for every upperclassman in the Quad, one more freshman from New Jersey gets stuck in the high rises, trapped in a box with three other roommates without the refuge that the winding corridors -- and hundreds of other freshmen -- in the Quad and Hill House provide. The college houses certainly do provide advantages -- among them, advising, computer facilities, entertainment options and study space. But the system has been around long enough that Penn should now re-evaluate it to see where it can be improved. Seniors and freshmen, after all, have very different needs; the college houses should be able to provide differentiated resources to both. Staff should evaluate how the living and learning programs have both succeeded and failed. Additionally, administrators should meet with those students who did not receive their top housing choices -- if anything, at all -- and determine how the system could have enhanced their experiences. Penn is a dynamic, constantly changing environment. As the college house system evolves to meet the needs of Penn students, administrators should look not only to our peer educational institutions, but also to the past few years right here on campus to discover how best to meet the needs of our students. They need to talk to all members of the Penn student community -- those who have chosen the college house system, those who return to it and those who have abandoned it -- in order to determine the best way to build upon what they have already created. And if that doesn't work, we can always copy Princeton.

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