Eliminate residential SLGs

The professed aims of the new house model—improved residential communities and greater social equity—represent both laudable and achievable goals. If the administration implements the house model in its current form, though, it will neither foster an ideal residential community nor achieve meaningful social equity among undergraduates.

Student confusion about the house model betrays its flaws. Although a recent Duke Student Government survey suggests that students’ understanding of the new house model has improved, about half of the students who responded indicated that they lack a clear understanding of how the changes will affect them. In our estimation, much of this uncertainty stems from the administration’s attempt to mold the house model around extant social and living structures, namely Selective Living Groups—which include any residential group, including greek organizations, that determines membership through a competitive selection process.

SLGs—affiliated houses in house model parlance—will undermine the University’s commitment to equity if allowed to exist within the new house model. The existence of SLGs will inevitably produce a situation in which students either rejected by or unable to make the financial commitment to SLGs will find themselves relegated to an unaffiliated house. These houses—like independents in the current model—will come to lack the perceived social status and capital of affiliated houses, and students may grow to regard unaffiliated houses as second-tier residential communities. Even for students who forgo rush and opt for unaffiliated housing from the beginning, the stigma that will attach itself to unaffiliated houses threatens to reduce their social capital and make the development of cohesive and socially-enriching communities difficult.

Whether or not the house model represents a positive change to campus life is up for debate, but if the administration wants the model to succeed on its own terms, it will have to eliminate the residential component of SLGs. In the same way that sororities have traditionally offered a social but not residential community, fraternities and other selective groups will have to become purely social organizations. Doing so will be the only way to ensure that unaffiliated houses do not become second-class members of the campus community.

Currently, SLGs provide an enjoyable and rewarding experience for their members. Indeed, the goal of the house model is, in some sense, to offer a similar communal living experience for non-affiliated students. But affiliated houses will create social stratification, and if students enter unaffiliated houses only because their other options have been exhausted, it seems unlikely that students in those houses will ever be able to achieve the kind of cohesive living experience currently enjoyed by SLGs.

Whether we like it or not, the house model is coming, and, though far from perfect, we want it to succeed. In order for the house model to represent a positive social force on campus, the administration must make selective groups non-residential. We acknowledge the obstacles, both logistical and social, to eliminating the residential element of SLGs, and realize that, even if the house model does so, the existence of selective social groups will allow social inequity to persist. But, despite these difficulties, we feel that the house model cannot achieve its goals if it institutionalizes inequity, and, therefore, we advocate for the elimination of the residential component of SLGs.