Housing debate: One more look

Penn's top administrators, faculty and student leaders met yesterday to debate the issue of freshman-concentrated housing for what may be the last time before its fate is decided.

The University Council weighed in on three possible options for freshmen in Penn's college houses. Provost Ron Daniels could make a final decision on the issue by April's end.

Phil Nichols, faculty director of College Houses and Academic Services, presented several options to those at yesterday's meeting.

The first of the three options is to make no major changes to the College House system -- whose creation was undertaken 10 years ago -- and to let it "continue to evolve," he said.

The second option -- which a Undergraduate Assembly steering committee proposed to the provost earlier this semester --involves concentrating freshmen in the Quadrangle, Kings Court/English House and Hill College House. Under their plan, Harrison, Harnwell, Hamilton, Stouffer, DuBois and Gregory college houses would be reserved for upperclassmen.

Nichols described a third option that involves evenly distributing freshmen and sophomores among all 11 college houses. This would leave roughly 25 percent of each college house for upperclassmen.

According to Nichols, the biggest obstacles to creating unified college house communities at Penn are the lack of available University housing and of loyalty to any given college house.

"Most students at Penn spend one year in one college house, one year in another college house and then move off campus," Nichols said, adding that while Penn's peer institutions house virtually all of their undergraduates, the University can only house slightly more than half.

Creating a unified freshman experience is made more difficult by the radically different floor plans of different college houses, Nichols added.

But many students present yesterday expressed concern about the idea of freshman-concentrated housing.

One criticism is that the proposal curbs some freedoms that incoming freshmen currently enjoy.

College junior Andrew Mener worried that some religious freshmen who opt to live together in tightly knit communities on the first few floors of the high rises may not have that option under the new plan.

Traditionally, "the bottom several floors of [Hamilton] have had a large [Jewish] Orthodox observant population and one of the concerns ... is that that community would not be possible under" the proposals, Mener said.

However UA member and College sophomore Jason Karsh questioned the idea that integrating freshmen with upperclassmen provides the best experience for first-year students.

"I was assigned to a non-freshman floor in a high rise my freshman year," he said. "Not only did it not benefit me, it was negative because the hall was not conducive to meeting people."

This fall's incoming freshman class won't be affected by whatever plan is adopted, as the new system won't be enacted until the following September.

The wrong decision on this issue "could make or break the College House system," Nichols said.

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