What’s in a house?

I hate to admit it, but I wasn’t surprised when The Chronicle announced on Monday that the Social Justice House and Latino Cultural House were being disbanded due to lack of interest. For all of the negative consequences of the house model (I’ve previously discussed a great number of them), one positive result is the creation of sorority houses and new selective living groups that allow students a greater variety of options. Unfortunately, there is no guidebook for creating a successful SLG, which begs the question: Which affiliated houses will thrive under the house model?

I think looking at precedence is a good place to start. Assuming that the success of a house is directly related to the number of members it is able to sustain, then the larger, “veteran” houses should be good examples of what works when designing an affiliated house. Generally speaking, the largest selective living groups tend to be organizations that are not organized around some intellectual principal. These groups, which include Mirecourt, Maxwell House, Brownstone and Wayne Manor, all occupy large or extra large houses under the new model. More intellectually-focused houses like Arts Theme House and InCube tend to occupy small or extra small houses, with the notable exception of Language House (Langdorm). If history has shown us anything, it is that groups of students with common intellectual curiosities do not necessarily make for viable houses. That isn’t to say that the sense of community in these houses is somehow less strong, it simply means that these houses aren’t the most appealing to the majority of students.

In some cases, it is easy to understand why. Though being Latino was not a requirement for joining the now defunct Latino Culture House, it seems like a fair assumption that the majority of students in any cultural house would belong to its advertised demographic. Being from San Diego and having attended a high school with a high percentage of Latino and Hispanic students, I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty that sharing an ethnicity does not make people want to live together. Furthermore, if the house model is intended to foster community—both campus-wide and within houses—self-segregation seems like it would be work against student unity.

The Social Justice House is another good example of a poor design for an SLG. I’m sure there are plenty of students on campus who are curious about the societal issues that inspired this house, but that doesn’t mean they want to live together and spend every waking moment discussing racial marginalization.

Before creating a myriad of selective houses that are bound to fail, we need to understand that there is a difference between a club and a house. Many of the organizations that applied for houses next year are pre-existing clubs with cultural or intellectual focuses. Their missions, more often than not, are to inspire collective action or discussion about a topic. Neither of these goals is reliant upon a group of people living together, which is precisely what separates them from most selective living groups... greek organizations in particular.

The central goal of fraternities and sororities is to foster a strong sense of community. In order for this objective to be attained, it is absolutely imperative that greek organizations have the right to live together, a fact which the vast majority of universities recognize. If the administration wants to create houses that build community, they should not marginalize the greek community. They should look to fraternities and sororities as examples of how to forge bonds amongst a wide variety of students with varied interests. They’d quickly realize that strong communities are built around common ideals and principles, not intellectual curiosities.

In fact, many of the most successful non-greek selective living groups are remnants of Duke’s previous house model. Like greek organizations, they are primarily concerned with fostering community in their memberships, which tend to be far more diverse (both culturally and otherwise) than the memberships of fraternities and sororities. The continued viability of these organizations even after the demise of the original house model should provide a glimmer of hope for the lofty ambitions of new house model. But this same success will only be achieved if extant SLGs are revered as examples of triumph, not discredited as roadblocks to unity.

Here’s how I see it: Many SLGs and greek organizations have built stronger communities than will ever develop under the administration’s social engineering. Learn from them.