Leaders of selective living groups are expressing mixed reactions to the new Collaborative Housing Process and the announcement that the housing shuffle will not continue in the future.
CHP is a revised version of the Residential Group Assessment process and includes a new rubric and the formation of the Addition and Removal Committee, which has the power to place low-scoring living groups on probation. The process was ratified by Campus Council last Thursday and is a response to the administration’s decision to stop the housing shuffle.
“It doesn’t make sense to keep the shuffle,” Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said. “As we complete K4 and break ground on New Campus buildings, there will be reconceptualizing, and the housing shuffle may not be applicable.”
The Interfraternity Council was unsettled by this decision, said former IFC president Eric Kaufman, a senior. He said the administration should have entertained student input before making this decision and that terminating the shuffle is unfair.
“All the groups were pretty much hoodwinked,” Kaufman said, adding that groups—under the impression that they would switch section locations in three years—are stuck in “bad spots” for longer than they had planned to be.
Former Selective House Council president Kait Nagi, a senior, said that although selective living groups are fine with the decision because they are happy with their assigned sections, she understands how some groups in undesirable locations could be upset.
Selective House Council President Hilary Robbins, a senior, said this decision is mostly positive.
“Now that there’s some security there will be a lot less emotion because people won’t feel like they’re losing their homes,” Robbins said.
Nagi added that groups need better incentives to excel under CHP.
Kaufman and Delta Tau Delta fraternity President Richard Bracken, a junior, also said the process could benefit from better incentives. DTD was one of the fraternities most affected by the shuffle this year.
“[Under the ARC and CHP] it’s really just trying to not get kicked off,” Bracken said. “What’s the point if we can’t move sections—other than to stay on campus?”
IFC President Erskine Love, a junior, said that although stopping the shuffle seems “backwards” because it “locks” groups into sections after just one RGA cycle, he understands why the administration had to make this decision.
“We understand that it ultimately benefits the entire campus community to refrain from playing a campus-wide game of musical chairs every three years,” Love wrote in an e-mail.
He added that IFC aims to work with Campus Council and the SHC to derive alternatives for “responsible community living.”
Clarybel Peguero, assistant dean of fraternity and sorority life, also sees some benefit to stopping the shuffle, noting that a more stable location would allow for the development of stronger communities.
As for CHP, the process itself is receiving generally positive reviews. Going into the RGA revision process last December, SHC and IFC leaders wanted clearer standards and more objectivity.
Robbins said the best improvement that has been made since last semester was that the stewardship section of the rubric is more quantitative.
“I’m very pleased with [CHP],” Robbins said “We really accomplished our goal of groups being able to know their scores going in.”
Nagi said almost all of SHC’s suggestions for CHP, like removing liaisons and imposing more stringent standards for committee members and assessment members, were implemented .
The 60 percent emphasis on stewardship and the smaller number of required events per year—six, revised from eight in an earlier version of the CHP—were two of the most beneficial features of CHP, Kaufman said. But he added that there are still some vague elements to the process, like the points awarded to diversity in programming.
Moneta said CHP will promote transparency and facilitate ties between stakeholders, allowing a more straightforward partnership between the council and administrators. It will also be clearer to students how decisions are made, he said.
But IFC representatives said the collaboration with Campus Council and the administration to draft CHP was less than ideal.
Kaufman said IFC feels that it was notified of major changes and developments in the RGA revision process and the creation of CHP “after the fact.”
“We have been technically involved since the beginning of the revision process,” Kaufman said. “However, we have been pretty much notified on a need-to-know basis and been kind of frustrated.”
Going forward, IFC wants to work with Campus Council and the administration to work out any areas of CHP that need clarifying or can be improved, Love said.
“If we learned anything from the culmination of the last three-year cycle this Fall, we will be sure to remember that it would be much easier to fix problems along the way instead of waiting to attend to the issues until it is too late to do anything about them,” he said.
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