While significant surface-level changes have been made to the linking process for the next academic year, more substantial changes to the program may loom ahead. A new linking pattern has been proposed by RLHS and will be made official after discussions with both East Campus Council and Campus Council.
While significant surface-level changes have been made to the linking process for the next academic year, more substantial changes to the program may loom ahead.
The links from dormitories on East Campus to quadrangles on West Campus have been shuffled around for Fall 2005 due to increased class size, a gender imbalance and two new living-learning groups—the Baldwin Scholars and the Wellness Living Learning Group—that require housing. These changes made it impossible to guarantee beds under the old linking configuration, said Jennifer Frank, housing assignments coordinator.
A new linking pattern has been proposed by the Office of Housing Assignments and will be made official Jan. 31 after discussions with both East Campus Council and Campus Council.
“The proposal is based entirely on the this year’s numbers, and the fact of the matter is that it is just a very different demographic group than it has been in the past,” Frank said.
Residence Life and Housing Services and Campus Council, however, are currently examining the linking process in general in order to ascertain whether the system merits more considerable changes in the future. In the upcoming semester, Campus Council will evaluate linking to determine whether the program achieves its goal of translating community from East Campus to West Campus.
In Spring 2003, one year after its inception, the linking process was placed on a one-year probationary period by Campus Council so that the council could assess the institution more accurately. This spring, the council has returned to the linking discussion and will extensively review its success or failure for the first time since its creation in Fall 2002.
“Linking was created to transfer that wonderful, happy, everybody-loves-each-other, East Campus community to West Campus,” Campus Council President Anthony Vitarelli said. “We can all agree that the sophomore experience lacks that cohesion present on East.”
Campus Council will be working with students and administrators in RLHS to understand the history and goals of linking and to feel out alternatives to the linking process, Vitarelli said. The council will begin its investigation in tonight’s meeting with a presentation by Frank.
“Maintaining community has been achieved in some housing links, but we have to see if there are other ways to achieve that same goal that are better,” said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean of residence life.
Possible alternatives to linking range from abandoning the system all together to increasing the size of blocks to making no changes and maintaining the current linking process, officials said. “Everything is on the table,” Vitarelli said. “The prospect of making a recommendation to abolish linking has been discussed and will continue to be discussed.”
Administrators and student leaders agree that the linking system has not created the same community on West Campus that can be found on East Campus. Eddie Hull, executive director of housing services and dean of residence life, said the problem lies in the fact that students are treating linking as a location opportunity. “Students may just be using [linking] for a real-estate game, and they may not be as interested in living together as in living in certain place,” he said.
Vitarelli said linking has not translated community to West Campus because not enough freshmen participate in the linking process. “Linking numbers are high, but they are not high enough to produce an exact replica of East Campus,” he said.
University administrators, who have defended linking for the past several years, are open to serious discussions about ways to advance the goals behind linking.
“The notion was brilliant, but the practical application was challenging at best,” said Assistant Dean of Students Deb Lo Biondo, who helped pioneer linking. “There are a lot of factors that hinder us in achieving what linking was intended to do.”
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