After failing to fill the majority of their allotted sections, the new Social Justice House and Latino Cultural House will not have housing in the Fall under the new house model.
Although Housing, Dining and Residence Life did not set an official cutoff for the percentage of beds selective living groups had to fill, groups had to occupy more than half their living space to keep their housing assignments, said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residence life.
Gonzalez said the new house model did not necessarily affect this outcome for the new SLGs.
“It’s not necessarily new for a new group not to come to fruition,” he said. “There are always a handful [of SLGs] that have a few more empty beds than anyone prefers, but we haven’t had a situation in past years where groups were this low in filling the houses.”
The Social Justice House and the Latino Cultural House applied for space under the house model in the Fall.
Junior Simon Ho, co-founder of Social Justice, said there was no indication during recruitment that the SLG would not attract enough students to fill its house, as rush events often drew more than 20 prospective members. Social Justice gave out 10 bids at the conclusion of SLG recruitment earlier this month.
“As a new SLG coming onto campus, we didn’t have the stability of already having members to run things and already having the budget to run rush events,” Ho said. “The biggest disadvantage was, as a new house entering onto campus, we would have to contend for attention from all of the already established SLGs and all of the other new ones as well.”
Representatives from the Latino Cultural House could not be reached for comment.
Gonzalez said HDRL supported new SLGs by offering space and funding for social events. Social Justice received $450 for its recruitment process, Ho said.
Freshman Ashton Pemberton, who joined Social Justice before it was disbanded, said he was surprised the group could not maintain its status as an SLG next Fall.
“I was not very happy about [Social Justice] getting pulled,” Pemberton said. “It sort of left a sour taste in my mouth about how Duke does housing.”
Pemberton, who will be living in the Wellness on West community instead of Social Justice next semester, noted that he did not feel any pressure from the new house model to become affiliated.
“The main premise of the housing model is an increased level of community, and those ties within the house we hope are going to be much stronger than what we’ve seen in the quad[rangle] model,” Gonzalez said. “We just hope and believe that the Duke house model will make the residential time a more meaningful one than it currently is.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.