Students uncertain about college house proposal

Students expressed mixed reactions to the Residential Faculty Council's "collegiate cluster plan" last night. The RFC's proposal calls for the development of six collegiate clusters. Each would include a first-year house, a college house, a group of students living off-campus and a section of floors in a high rise. Students said they were uncertain whether the RFC's proposal could be successfully implemented. "I think it sounds like a good idea as far as getting students to mingle," College freshman Monique Martin said. "Whether it will work or not is a different question, especially as far as getting people to go out and do things [with their cluster]." Martin said she thought the plan had merits as well as problems. "People sometimes get a little apathetic about traveling different places -- even getting floor meetings together is difficult," she said. "But I think if people like the idea, it will work." Martin added that the proposal might be good for students like her, who live on one side of campus and do not get to know students who live elsewhere. "I live in DuBois and don't meet a lot of people who live in the Quad or other places," she said. "Some freshmen don't get around to the other houses and meet people." College sophomore Candice Choh, a resident of High Rise South, said she did not think the collegiate cluster plan was necessary. "If you choose to live in a college house and know what it's about, then you can choose to do that," she said. "It seems to me there are already a lot of programs and if people want to do it, they have the opportunity to. "But not a lot of people want to do things like that," she added. "Opportunities like this are available and to expand it would be futile." Choh said she did not believe students would take advantage of the extra options the collegiate clusters might provide, adding that enough academic support and programming exists currently. Despite her reservations, Choh said the proposal could make the residences better, depending on the final product. Undergraduate Assembly Chairperson Dan Debicella said he was in favor of the "idea of a college house plan." "I also like the idea of allowing choice in where you can live with the default of making it random," the Wharton junior said. Debicella raised concerns over faculty involvement in the proposed system, saying that more faculty will have to live in the dormitories for the system to work. He added that renovations might be necessary to encourage more faculty to become involved with the residences. Administrators and faculty members said the plan in its preliminary stages is an excellent beginning to the Provost's Council on Undergraduate Education's attempt to combine academics and student life. In its draft stage, the plan does not include any provisions for those living in fraternities or sororities. The current draft also does not form clusters with units in close physical proximity. Instead, academic and social programming activities and resources would allow students to come together as a cluster, RFC Chairperson and English Professor Robert Lucid said. PCUE discussed and debated these ideas, along with the plan as a whole, Monday night, Provost Stanley Chodorow said last night. "It's really a framework and it makes other things possible," Chodorow said, adding that PCUE hopes to develop pilot programs to try out the proposal. Chodorow said that the Greek system and the cluster's physical layout would be debated and solved over time. "The best thing to do is to try to see if we can work something out and make it happen," he said.