Posted on Sep 1, 2003

When work on the House System began, the campus heard that the changes to the campus social and residential scene would be a dynamic work in progress. And so it is, as this fall saw: the opening of the first two houses in South College; the sounds of jackhammers and other equipment as the renovations on Chi Psi, Psi Upsilon, and North College moved into high gear; an announcement that the College had bought the former Ramada Inn and would convert it into a student residence hall.

The Background

The House System is a major outcome of extensive campus-wide discussions held during the 1990s. Out of these discussions came The Plan for Union-a comprehensive strategic plan that has, as one of its central points, a reaffirmation of the close connection between academic and residential life.

The Plan recommended that the College institute a House System to create more opportunities for students to interact with each other and with their teachers. The Board of Trustees approved the House System in the spring of 2001.

The College has committed about $20 million to renovate and redesign the houses to offer students space that will support interaction, fun, and togetherness. Sasaki Associates, a nationally-known architectural firm, has worked closely with Union to develop the residential program.

Each house will provide its members with an intimate social setting, and the physical space will offer an ideal opportunity for interaction with other students, faculty, and staff. Houses will be equipped with a kitchen, a living room, a dining area, a game room, a seminar room, and an office equipped with a fax machine, copier, and work area.

Central to the success of the House System is the need for strong governing bodies, as students will shape the tone and pulse of the campus. Houses will be expected to contribute to the intellectual, cultural, and social life on campus. Houses will help orient new students, sponsor community service projects, and field teams for intramural competition. Working with campus life offices, students will have numerous opportunities to develop their leadership skills and to participate in programs to enhance their effectiveness as they work together toward common goals.

Nuts and Bolts

With the new House System, every student will be a member of a house, which can be a focus for social activities, a vehicle for community service, a starting point for making new friends, or simply a welcoming place to hang out, cook, read, play pool, or enjoy chance meetings with other house members.

Students will be introduced to the House System in the summer before they first arrive at Union. Every first-year student will be randomly assigned to an affiliation with one of the houses, an affiliation that will be maintained through all four years at Union.

Approximately 40 upperclass members will live in each of the seven houses. First-year students will live with their classmates in residence halls, and they, like all house members, will be able to take advantage of house gathering space and activities even though they live elsewhere. For example, members of houses may also be members of and live in Greek organizations or theme houses. No student will have to live in a house; the House System simply adds another option to the choices that currently exist-residence halls, College Park apartments, Greek and theme houses, and off-campus apartments.

A key to the vibrancy of the House System will be the engagement of faculty and staff with students in an out-of-
class setting. All faculty members will have house affiliations, and faculty will work with house members in the planning and organization of educational and cultural events. Some courses will be taught in houses to further the linkage of living and learning environments.

What Makes It Tick

The House System is a continually-changing work in progress-just what students and faculty had in mind when they began their conversation about campus life.

Charged with getting the system underway was a nineteen-member Implementation Committee, which began meeting in the fall of 2002. Their goal-make the transition to the House System as seamless as possible. One of their first questions? How do we institute the House System when only two-sevenths of the students and faculty can be affiliated with South College, the first House? The answer? The committee divided South into two “laboratories?-a Yellow Lab and a Green Zone-and invited students to apply much as they would for a theme house.

Tom McEvoy, dean of residential and campus life, described South as a “bridge” to full implementation of the House System in the fall of 2004.

“These labs are a prime opportunity for students and faculty to get a preview of what the upcoming house system will look like, how it will function, and what it will bring to the campus,” McEvoy says. “We want to try out a variety of events and work with the students living in these spaces as well as the campus community to get an idea of what we're doing well, what we can improve on, and what we haven't yet thought of.

“The labs are an attempt to assimilate dorm life and house life,” he continues. “You can have the opportunity to get to know all 42 people you live with, not just the 10 people who live in your hall. The labs will be places for events-parties, poetry readings, concerts, formal dinners, mardi gras-and, of course, we will begin integrating campus and academic life. The seminar rooms in South will be used for classes, for example, and we'd like professors to help out or participate in events.”

Other Fronts

The advent of the House System is the most recent of social and residential changes designed to encourage meaningful interaction outside the classroom. The College recognizes and provides housing for several fraternities and sororities, and students have established ten theme houses with interests ranging from music and culture to Asian cultures to community service. Traditional residential halls now offer a variety of options, and apartment-style housing is available for upperclass students in the College Park neighborhood adjacent to campus. This fall, the College announced that it had purchased the former Ramada Inn and would convert it into a residence hall for more than 200 students.

Where We Are

September 2002: Alpha Epsilon Pi moves to McKean House. September 2002: Implementation Committee begins
detailed planning. June 2003: Psi Upsilon and Chi Psi move from current houses to other campus housing. June 2003-June 2004: North College, Psi Upsilon, and Chi Psi renovations begin. Buildings go off-line. September 2003: South College reopens as two houses. College buys former Ramada Inn. June 2004: Sigma Phi moves from current house to other campus housing and Sigma Phi renovation begins. September
2004: North College reopens as two houses. Psi Upsilon and
Chi Psi houses are renamed and become part of the House System. September 2004: House System at Union begins.

Implementation Committee

Overseeing the implementation of the House System is a committee comprising students, faculty, and administrators: Tom McEvoy, Chair, Dean of Residential and Campus Life; Julius Barbanel, Professor of Mathematics; Suzanne Benack, Professor of Psychology; Barbara Danowski, Associate Professor of
Biology; Hugh Jenkins, Associate Professor of English; Brenda Johnson, Associate Professor of Mathematics; Therese McCarty, Professor of Economics; Matthew Milless, Director of Student Activities; Byron Nichols, Professor of Political Science; William Scanlon, Senior Assistant Director of Athletics; Alan Taylor, Mary Louise Bailey Professor of Mathematics; Senior Student Consultant Katrina Tentor '03; Gillian McCabe '05; Peter Jewett '05; Peter Gorvitz '04; Sonya Saxena '06; Lizzy Wigder '04; Peter Stein '04; Rebecca Seaman '04; Nish Patel '04; and Kent Van der Wal '04.

The Explorers

Perhaps the best way to understand the excitement being generated by the House System is to hear from those who will be a central part of it-the students. Last winter, the Office of Residential Life asked students interested in living in South College-the first two houses-to answer a few questions. Here is a sampling:

What service, skill, or quality would you bring
to the South College community?

• I am very down to earth and capable of interacting with many different groups and cliques, so I could act as the “glue” between two different groups.
• I see myself as an able leader, willing to organize and see that an activity is carried out. This seems like a perfect opportunity to exercise my leadership skills.
• Cleaning is definitely one of the things my mother taught me how to do well. I can guarantee that I will help keep South as clean as possible.
• I like to keep things real and interesting, scorning conformity and routine. I'll try to make life in South as unique and dynamic as possible, either by setting an example or by actively stirring stuff up.
• I am vociferous, eccentric, and opinionated.
• I make a mean spaghetti dinner. I'm also agreeable, friendly, and intelligent, and always looking to meet new people.

Why do you want to live in South?

• One reason I applied to Union was because it was a small school with a small student-teacher ratio. Though I have created something of a relationship with my teachers, I would love the chance to socialize in the same place, getting the chance to make these relationships stronger and more personal.
• South College truly represents a “melting pot” of people, lifestyles, and ideals. That is something I would like to be part of.
• I am trying to get involved in the Union community as much as possible, in hopes of making these the absolute best years of my life. By joining South I would be diving even further into the community and helping to be a “guinea pig” and one of the lucky ones who gets to be a part of the House System first.
• I am intrigued by the concept of a dorm that is more than a dorm. South will be more of a community than a building with a few hundred students enclosed behind the doors of their rooms.
• The role of student housing is not only to give students a place to sleep, but a place to live. The experience of South will give me the opportunity to combine my social life with a variety of social events, student activities, lectures, and a stronger interaction with the faculty.
• I envision South as a place of social enrichment and personal development.

If you could plan any event for South, what would it be?

• If I could plan any one event, it would be one in which the community is locked in the house for 24 hours and forced to get to know one another, work together to make meals, and entertain one another.
• I would sponsor events to present more opportunities for students to build relationships with their professors, such as an informal lunch at a local restaurant, where students could have a chance to talk removed from the sometimes constricting, impersonal nature of the classroom.
• Any event? I'll have a massive, week-long concert/banquet/
  orgy/anti-war protest, complete with inflatable pools, giant cotton-candy, lemurs, and chandeliers for swinging. In the realm of possibility? You should have specified. Realistically it would be cool (and essential) to have an orientation/party when we first move to South so we can get to know each other and familiarize ourselves with what we're trying to do.

• I would plan “economic stimulus” trips into Schenectady, such as more events at Proctor's Theater. It would do a lot for both Union and Schenectady.
• I would plan some sort of “Snow Fun Day,” where all the students from South would go to stations around campus. Each person would have a different order of events so that they could meet different people. There could be broom ball, a snowball fight, snow soccer, and a low-key inside activity to warm up, like board games.

If you could change one thing about Union, what would it be?

• Diversity. Many people who come to Union come from a life filled with people of one color, and many people could benefit from interaction with people unlike themselves.
• I would start a tolerance program in which people would be required to attend a few meetings during the year. This does not simply limit tolerance to race or religion but also to financial differences.
• We need to find a way to put an end to ignorance and make people more aware of other cultures. If we implemented a monthly event that resembles an ethnic group fair, we could designate each month to a different culture.
• I would change the social environment. I would not have it revolve solely around fraternity parties but rather around something that is more likely to get everyone on campus involved.
• I would reduce the political and social apathy.
• People should be interviewed at the end of their freshman year (or beginning of junior year) with questions like, “How have you grown as a person?” and “How have you made Union better?” After that, the Admissions Office can let you back in.

For the latest information about the House System, visit us at www.union.edu/HouseSystem

Posted on Sep 1, 2003

Enhancing community

When the College decided to purchase and renovate the nearby Ramada Inn, the
decision to do so was, to me, an obvious one.

The acquisition will help us meet several longstanding goals of the College. Among these goals:

It will provide appropriate social space for students; for example, the Jason Mraz concert I recently attended in Memorial Chapel would fit far more appropriately into the inn's ballroom;

It will give us much-needed athletic space with the addition of a turf field for lacrosse and soccer;

It will continue our efforts to make Union's environs safer for our students by cleaning up an unsightly and dark area;

It will be at worst revenue neutral and at best generate positive cash flow, with student room and board fees and conferencing possibilities paying for the project;

It will add another facet to our House System.

The last point is of special interest. Over the past few years, we have taken several long looks at ourselves, including a comprehensive self-study we did to prepare for our reaccredidation in 2000. A recurring theme among students has been their desire for more opportunities to get to know their teachers outside of the classroom and the laboratory. To address this desire is one of the chief goals of our new House System, and it is the principal reason we often talk of the House System as our most important academic initiative.

Union has always been a residential liberal arts college. “Residential” is key. Like our counterparts, we are convinced that the 24/7 nature of a college campus like ours enhances a sense of community. In turn, that fact contributes to our students' education, for learning can-and should-come in many ways outside of the classroom, from offbeat film series to late-night debates in dorm rooms to inviting faculty members over for coffee or dinner. Yet for many years we have not been able to provide this kind of atmosphere for all of our students. A shortage of on-campus housing has meant that up to twenty-five percent of our students live
in off-campus apartments and, as a result, the sense of community has been compromised.

When the opportunity arose to purchase the former Ramada Inn, we at first thought about continuing to keep
it open as a hotel, since the hotel was a profitable operation. However, the more the Board of Trustees examined the issue, the clearer it became that converting the hotel into a residence hall would better meet the long-term goals of the College and develop further our positive presence in the neighborhoods adjacent to campus.

When renovations are complete, including the creation of the athletic fields adjacent to the building, we will have added a wonderful new residence hall for 230 students-and brought the percentage of students who live on campus to more than 90 percent (about 200 students will continue to live in off-campus housing). In the process, we will have a facility with study areas, a fitness area, conference facilities, and a deli/coffee bar, and we will arrange housing to meld with the House System, perhaps by having floors tied to houses.

If we had such a need for new student housing, why did we not build on campus? Because I think it is vital that we maintain the integrity of our historic campus-the first planned campus in America. Indeed, our recent lawsuit against the city (successfully concluded in 2001) was necessitated by the fact that, other than the historic campus, we had no space on which to build.

I have no doubt that students will embrace the new residence hall. Since our College Park neighborhood added apartment-style housing for about 200 students, there has been an increasing demand for on-campus housing by all students, including juniors and seniors. And, with private baths in each room, the “inn” will be in high demand.

We recognize that some students and parents will have concerns with the perceived distance from campus, security, and the hotel-like image of the building (although the Ramada is closer to the Nott Memorial than several of the student residence halls located on Lenox Road). To address these issues, a lighted walkway will be built, and there will be regular transportation provided from the main campus to the new residence hall by trolley; there will be a security presence at the new building twenty-four hours a day; and we are confident that our architects will create an attractive and enticing design in keeping with the College's splendid architecture.

It's an exciting time at Union and, if you have not visited the campus in a while, I urge you to come back. There is
no question that the physical campus determines, to a great degree, the kind of life that is lived on it. As we plan these changes, we do so believing fervently that the lives of our students will be enhanced.

Roger H. Hull