Archived Edition: May 09, 2007 | Back to Current	Sep 10, 2010

Proposal pairs neighboring 2011 entries into clusters



First-year cluster living may be undergoing some changes in the near future. In response to student complaints and a request from College Council, the Office of Campus Life is currently working to change the way that first-year entries are affiliated with the cluster system.

At the beginning of this year, each entry was assigned a cluster affiliation that was different from that of neighboring entries. With the exception of Willy D and Willy E, both assigned to Spencer neighborhood, no adjacent entry was in the same cluster.

When it came time for students to pick-in, not being able to room with friends outside of their entry elicited serious frustrations. One large point of contention was that students who had shared a floor or a bathroom with non-entrymates were unable to live with these students after their first year due to the entry distribution in the cluster system.

“The way it was set up this year was almost an afterthought,” said Morgan Goodwin ’08, CC co-president and Junior Advisor (JA).

“We’re making changes based on student feedback,” said Aaron Gordon, assistant director of Campus Life. The most frequent complaint that Gordon heard was that first-years in the same cluster did not get opportunities to interact with each other because of distance between their entries. Looking to rearrange the affiliations so that more pockets of people would be placed in the same neighborhood, Gordon initiated a plan to affiliate neighboring entries with the same cluster. He pointed out that at some point they are going to have to commit to a certain format and evaluate that over time to evaluate the effectiveness of the cluster system. “We’ll take what works and fix what doesn’t,” he said.

The reorganization of Mission and Frosh quad entries has not been officially decided, but any change would be intended to facilitate interaction between entries in the same clusters.

“You never knew what other entry was connected to your neighborhood,” Gordon said. He expressed his hope that this new plan will lead to a more logical distribution of the first-year class. “It will be more likely that your friends outside your entry will be in the same cluster,” he said, so that first-years will not be as categorically limited to their entries when choosing a pick-in group for their sophomore year.

Goodwin expressed his satisfaction with Gordon’s proposal Friday morning. He explained that as a JA, he has seen how the random cluster affiliations have negatively affected students’ room draw choices. “People had a lot of friends that they couldn’t live with, and we don’t really want that to be the point of the cluster system,” said Goodwin.

According to JA Jon Stone ’08 the plan seems like an improvement on paper, but might not help the situation in practice. “Theoretically it sounds great because people in neighboring entries should be talking more often, but that doesn’t always happen,” he said, explaining that his entry rarely interacts with its neighboring entry.

“It’s more natural that you bond with people who are on your floor,” said Salvador Villa ’10. He explained that he has spent a lot of time in the study room on the floor above him and saw people constantly passing between the neighboring houses of Mills and Dennett. “You’ll see people walking back and forth, and these social bonds do strengthen,” he said.

While some support the uniform cluster affiliation of neighboring entries, others worry that the change will serve only to increase the locality of groups of friends. “If anything, it would just restrict you in terms of branching out on campus,” said Matt Law ’10. He felt that by creating pockets of clusters, people would end up living with the same people for all four years.

Some feel that cluster unity, regardless of entry organization, needs to begin once students arrice on campus to begin their first year. “I think if the clusters actually try from the get-go to actually foster cluster unity among the freshman, that will make a difference,” said Emily Rockett ’10.

Meggie Nidever ’10, Baxter Fellow of Goodrich and Sewall and co-chair of the Dodd social committee for next year, articulated Dodd cluster’s emphasis on reaching out to first-years as soon as they get here in the fall. “It’s definitely the role of the neighborhood to bring their freshman together, not the role of Campus Life.”