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Volume CXXXIII, Number 17 |
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House system doesn't give enough
TODD BUELL
Last Wednesday was the deadline for applications to live in college houses
for the 2002-2003 academic year. The process now shifts to individual
and group interviews and then eventually to a mixed committee made up
of students and Residential Life administrators. This committee will eventually
determine the composition of next year's houses.
As someone who has lived in a college house for the last two years, I
thought this would be an appropriate time to give first years an honest
and balanced assessment of what life is like inside a college house.
The truth is that the system needs to be altered in order to achieve
its full potential. It currently overburdens students with expectations
and regulations while denying them ownership of their own house.
A prime example of this is the selection process. It is flawed and overemphasizes
homogeneity among the houses. The aforementioned committee consists of
one student who lives in the house but is not returning, one student from
another house, and one member of the Residential Life staff. No member
of the house who plans on living there again gets a voice in the selection
process.
This rule was established as a way of preventing houses from becoming
"themed." The fear is that if houses became at all self-selecting,
one would become a hockey house, while others would reflect theater, baseball,
and other fragments of the student body.
There is a good rationale for challenging even the premise that such
"themed" houses are necessarily a bad thing. God forbid people
who are interested in the same activities live together, but since the
house system is a form of social engineering on campus, the desire for
a diverse group of people in a house has won out as the telos of college
house selection.
However, this desire should not shut current house residents out of the
selection process. These students know that they will live, plan events,
and work with every new resident who enters the house. The selection committee's
results matter more to the current resident than they do to anyone else
on the committee.
Therefore it seems natural that a current resident should get a vote
in determining the future composition of the house. Since he or she is
still just one vote out of three, the fear of houses becoming "themed"
is no more actualized than it is under the current system.
Life within the house has its drawbacks as well. Again, many of the problems
stem from the ownership issue. Even though the house system is meant to
supplant the positive elements of fraternity life, excessive regulations
and limitations quell the houses's creative potential.
For example, some houses, including my own, lack basic cooking equipment,
such as stoves. This makes us dependent on Dining Services to supply food,
utensils, and other supplies if we want to have proctor groups or professors
over at our house for dinner.
We have to beg for permission to paint artistic designs on our walls.
We have little privacy. School employees can roam through our house whenever
they wish; they don't need to ask permission first, and seldom extend
the courtesy of even informing us that they are coming. We are expected
to accommodate the wishes of other student groups in letting them use
our space, without expecting anything in return.
Most onerously, the college culture expects us to be a source of parties
where alcohol is served. This means that 21-year-olds are almost expected
to break the law for the house system to function. Although some might
dispute this claim, anyone who has lived in a non-"chem free"
house knows this is the case.
Newcomers to the house system, do not think that I wasted two years of
my college life. I have gotten to know many students and alums as a result
of my two years in Quinby House; these are people whom I probably would
not have met if I had lived somewhere else. Some of my most fulfilling
relationships at Bowdoin have been with my house "brothers and sisters."
New residents, you are the stewards of this embryonic system. I challenge
you, and the campus as a whole, to make the system work better for yourself
and all future classes. As Allan Bloom wrote in his classic work The Closing
of the American Mind, "The gravity of our given task is great, and
it is very much in doubt how the future will judge our stewardship."