Some living groups bypassed the typical route in determining housing sections for next year.
Four University-sponsored selective living groups—Wellness Community, Substance-Free, Women’s Housing Option and Baldwin Scholars—will be housed on West Campus in the house model beginning Fall 2012. Some students have expressed concern about the exclusion of administrative living groups from participating in the October house model lottery. The lottery, which placed 45 sororities, fraternities and non-greek SLGs in new houses for next year, was marked by contention and drama. The University-sponsored SLGs were assigned housing locations after the lottery took place.
The administration made the decision in order to account for particularly large groups and to maintain gender balance among West and Central campuses, said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean for residential life.
Junior Elena Botella, executive chair of the Nexus and a Chronicle columnist, said this information should have been released before the lottery. Nexus, the only SLG to currently offer gender-neutral living situations, will be housed on Central Campus next year. The administrative gender-neutral housing option will also be offered on Central Campus next year.
Gonzalez noted that administrative groups differ from other living groups on campus through their process of selecting new members and receiving resources from the University.
“The students [in the administrative houses] are selected into the groups by the administrative sponsors for the community, not the student members,” he said.
Gonzalez said these administrative groups were not automatically given set sections on West or Central campuses—the intent was to maintain gender and size balance among living groups on the two campuses.
“We placed them after the lottery in October,” he said. “It made more sense to place [large groups] such as Wellness and Substance-Free because they have more than 200 beds to fill.”
He added that the Baldwin Scholars and the Women’s Housing Option, both of which are comprised entirely of females, were placed on West Campus after the nine Panhellenic Association sororities were placed on Central.
“It wasn’t a request on [the part of Baldwin Scholars] to stay on West,” said Donna Lisker, associate dean of undergraduate education and co-director of the Baldwin Scholars program, as well as co-chair of the House Model Committee. “[The placement] was a domino effect from the [Panhel] sororities being placed on Central.”
Botella noted that she does not consider the notion of maintaining gender balance good rationale because there is no guarantee that genders will be equally distributed across campuses.
Panhel President Jenny Ngo, a senior, said she believes that the University’s distinction between University-sponsored living groups and selective living groups is “complicated.” Panhel entertained the possibility of having all sororities living together in a mixed house but could not garner the status of an administrative group by the University.
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