Res. faculty back college house plan

The Residential Faculty Council yesterday endorsed its subcommittee's report advocating a "collegiate cluster" system as a method of combining academics and student life, RFC Chairperson and English Professor Robert Lucid said last night. A six-person subcommittee of the RFC presented its findings to the full body yesterday afternoon. After the RFC approved the proposal, Lucid presented it to the Provost's Council on Undergraduate Education yesterday evening. PCUE, as a group, was lukewarm in its response to the plan, advocating tryout periods and slow movement -- although not rejecting it either. "We were not given a complete green light," Lucid said. "But people want to keep looking, keep examining -- they're not sure this this was the exactly right configuration. But everyone was intrigued." Lucid, who is also co-Director of PCUE, released the details of the proposal last night, emphasizing that it was only "on the drawing board." And his co-director, Vice Provost Kim Morrison, said this is a "next step based on much of the work that's been done prior to now." The plan would create six "collegiate clusters" -- brought together by activities and programming, not in actual physical proximity. Each cluster would include a first year house -- Hill House, Kings Court/English House, or one of the four houses in the Quadrangle. A college house would also be part of a each cluster -- without Hill House as one of them, the sixth would be the Living Learning programs as one entity. Lucid said the RFC also attempted to involve students living in the high rises and off-campus, by making two more units in each cluster to accommodate them. A cluster would also include a group of students living off-campus and several floors of a high rise. Unlike a typical college house system, the RFC plan would not directly connect each school with a cluster. Currently, those who live in fraternities or sororities would not be involved in this plan at all, Lucid said. "The RFC thought 'let's stand free of the Greeks and they can stand free of us,'" Lucid said. "The Greek system is an entity in itself and I am not sure if they need collegiate clusters. "They could decide if they wanted to be involved or not," he added. Lucid said he hoped students would remain in the same cluster for their entire undergraduate career. The opportunity to switch would exist, however, for students who had specific reasons for wanting to live in a specific residence that was not part of their cluster, such as the Modern Languages College House. "This is a comprehensive attempt to create a system of communities in the student world beyond the four schools," Lucid said, adding that each cluster would have a name. He added that he hopes students would eventually not only identify themselves by school, but also by cluster. Students would choose their clusters before freshman year -- much like students choose their housing now. Freshmen could reside in first year housing or in the college houses, such as W.E.B. DuBois College House, just as they do now, Lucid said. "There's no reason to change that," Lucid said. "We thought it would be a matter of choice." Since the clusters would not be physically connected or necessarily even close together, they would use other methods of bringing one cluster's students, faculty and graduate students together. "I don't think Penn is such a huge campus," Lucid said. "In my opinion, being separated by distance is not out of connection, but there are different opinions on that." Lucid said the first method of binding students in clusters involves academic programming associated with the various schools. "A given collegiate cluster would reach out towards support of various kinds of academic programs of the schools," Lucid said, adding that programs such as tutoring, advising, and study groups would be part of this effort. The second method of bringing students in each cluster together is a non-school-based educational system -- involving lectures, symposiums, educational events, publications and other programming unaffiliated with the schools. The third area of connection within a cluster would be social and recreational, including intramural sports -- perhaps even involving competition between clusters, Lucid said. He added that this includes social events, clubs and gathering places. Under the RFC's plan, every standing faculty member would be assigned to a cluster. But Lucid recognized that not every professor would become involved. "Eighty percent would not be very active or active at all," he said. "But as much as 20 percent of the faculty could take an interest and at least make themselves available to students as resources." Lucid said several large questions remain unanswered in the RFC's preliminary draft. Although the clusters will not have overarching themes, they may begin to develop "personalities," Lucid said, individually emphasizing one area of the University, such as athletics, publications or performing arts. And the specific involvement of Dining Services in the collegiate cluster program has yet to be determined. "We would want dining more or less compatible with these six clusters," Lucid said. "You don't just wave the magic wand and get six dining halls, and we'd have to have big planning efforts." PCUE is planning to establish a smaller work group, to study and test the proposal.