A place to call home

Some people just want to live in the Quad. Of course, there are plenty of noble and enriching reasons to join Residential Programs like "The Study of Infectious Diseases," "Healthy Living" or "Law and Society." But some students just want to live with their friends.

Even when students are genuinely interested in the nominal subject, housing programs at Penn often struggle with participation and attendance of events. After all, these programs have to try to compete with class, studying, clubs and sports for students' time and energy.

It's ironic that what is probably Penn's most successful housing program is an unofficial and unintended one: the Stouffer Annex. For the first time in Penn's history, a number of transfer and exchange students are concentrated in a single small college house. Admittedly, this happened entirely by accident. The University delayed in deciding exactly what to do with the former Zeta Beta Tau fraternity house. When the house became designated for residential student living, most Penn students' housing requests had already been filled, leaving this as the only option for later applicants like transfer and exchange students.

Each year Penn accepts about 200 transfer students and 110 international exchange students. Normally, the University houses them, well, wherever there is room. While spreading transfer and exchange students across University housing may seem like a good way to fully integrate the students into University life, the practice tends to have the opposite effect.

It's hard enough for new students to find their place among the pre-existing social groups at Penn, and the usual housing situation does little to help. It's not easy being "the fourth guy" in a suite of three close friends or living on an anonymous high rise floor where the neighbors don't know each other. Worse still, being an older student on a primarily freshman floor.

Of the 36 students living in the Annex, 30 are either transfer or exchange students. Obviously, the residents do not make up a very large percentage of the transfer/exchange population, but what the Annex lacks in size it makes up for in outreach. This is due in large part to the layout of the house. Despite renovations over the summer, the Annex retains much of its frat-house feel, and the entire first floor is still one huge living room complete with sofas, chairs, a big TV and a pool table. At the beginning of the school year, the first floor provided a place for new students from all of the college houses to hang out and meet one another. Not surprisingly, it wasn't long into last semester before Stouffer Annex became known around campus as the "transfer house."

When I visited the Annex last Thursday, the feeling of community was unmistakable. Students were gathered around one of the upstairs kitchen tables, chatting and trying to figure out their plans for the night. As people wandered in and out, they told me about past Annex events like their Thanksgiving feast, pasta dinners and their plans for a Super Bowl party. But what they emphasized more than anything else was how much they loved living there. They stressed that having the "transfer house" community made adjusting to Penn a lot easier. And they want other new students to be able to have the same great first-semester experiences in the future.

There is little chance of that happening now. Next year, Stouffer Annex will be part of a new, official and planned Residential Program. Named "The Franklin Community," the program will focus on student involvement in community service and cultural events. Residents of the Franklin Community will each take one academic-based community service course and also pursue their own independent service projects.

There is no doubt that the Franklin Community is a very innovative and noble experiment. As the current residents of the Annex were quick to point out, it is also an untested one. They suggested that the Community go through a "trial run" on a couple high rise floors first. Then, if the program was successful and student interest builds, the University could move the Franklin Community into Stouffer Annex.

It's unfortunate that the University did not consider the impact on the existing community before making its decision. The application due date for the Franklin Community was almost a month ago, and it seems certain that Stouffer Annex will next year be a house for community service and not for students new to Penn. But it would be a shame for Penn to wait until another fraternity gets in trouble to create a "transfer house," as short as that wait may be.

Amara Rockar is a sophomore political science major from St. Louis. Out of Range appears on Fridays.

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