The release of Residential Group Assessment Committee scores last Friday raised questions about how the administration will use RGAC scores and the “fit principle” to assign living groups space in the house model.
RGAC scores can have no place in the house model. For the house model to work, the administration must stick to the value-free fit principle and work to ensure that the assignment process is free of bias.
The RGAC evaluations are a poor basis for housing assignments. RGAC scores are currently a composite of “section stewardship” and “community interaction” scores. This is a vague and controversial rubric. But worse, the process applies value judgements to living groups—and, by implication, to the areas that they are placed in.
This flies in the face of house model principles. The house model aims to make residential life at Duke more equitable. But this cannot happen as long as some areas—Central Campus, Edens Quadrangle—are stigmatized as undesirable. By moving groups with low RGAC scores to these areas, the administration will only perpetuate these stigmas.
The assignment process must be value free. The administration should create a computer program that places living groups based on group size, not their conduct from the previous year. This program will possess none of the bias of the Approval and Removal Committee.
The program should assign space based solely on two variables: the number of beds in the living groups and its group type: greek or non-greek. The program will then randomly assign each living group to a section appropriate to its size. The randomization process should be constrained to preserve geographic diversity and to guarantee that there is a healthy variety of groups in each area. A simple guideline might be to have a fixed number of beds separate any two groups of the same type.
For this process to work, students must feel the assignment process is truly random. The administration could create a website or even host a public event to ensure that process both is and appears to be without bias.
Once assigned its section, a living group should remain in that location for the long-term. For the house model to work, houses must be anchored to their location. A constant reshuffling of housing assignments will undermine the ultimate goal of the house model: to foster loyalty and community within each house. Students will bond over the unique characteristics of their houses’ locations.
Furthermore, given their attachment to their sections, students will strongly advocate for improvements in and around their houses. This will be especially constructive in areas currently considered undesirable, like Central Campus.
The implementation of the new house model presents many logistical problems but also opportunities to better current residential policy. Value judgments should be reserved for living group conduct boards. These bodies could issue punishments that have nothing to do with location, like preventing delinquent groups from reserving space and obtaining programming funds.
To ensure the success of the house model, RGAC must go and a new objective system must take its place. Such a system must treat all residential groups—residential locations—equally, regardless of their pasts. Such equity is absolutely compulsory if the house model is to get off to a good start.
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