Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: cohousing for a college

[David G Adams (dadams]

Greg Wadlinger wrote...
> 
> Rob S.'s tuesday post brought up some strongly-felt personal opinions abou
> community and the college environment.
> 
> At Dartmouth College, my alma mater, there is a central dining hall where 
> freshman class is to this day required to subscribe to a meal plan.  I thi
> this requirement did more to create community in each class (approx. 1,00
> students) than any of the cluster plans recently implemented in the dorms.
> ...
This is a little off topic, so I'll try to keep it short, but it relates to 
the appropriate size for community formation.

MIT has an unusual system in that freshlings come to campus _without_ a 
permanent housing assignment.  There is a period of 5 days or so in which 
Independent Living Groups and dorms and frosh get to know each other.  The 
ILGs make bids on frosh, the frosh pick living groups, and a big computer 
runs a lottery to give the dorm frosh their first or second choice. (Well, 
it used to be a big computer; it's probably a laptop now :-)  Frosh get a 
Residence Book during the summer, and ILGs send mailings out to help reduce 
the chaos of Rush week, and it seems to produce healthy, close knit ILGs as 
well as dorms with distinctive character.

There has been a movement among the administration to abolish this system 
and replace it with a more traditional all-frosh-in-dorms arrangement.  One 
of the primary stated goals of this movement is to strengthen the MIT 
community and weaken the ILG communities.  Many alums give more $$ to their 
frats / co-ops than to MIT (I am one of these).  Not many folks go to the 
football games.  School spirit is summed up by the ubiquitous phrase IHTFP 
(I hate this F*#&ing Place).  I would argue that the ILGs are a more 
appropriate mechanism for fostering _real_ community, and that this movement 
is primarily a ploy to kill off the weaker ILGs and replace them with more 
students on meal plans.  Having loved my ILG is why I've gotten into 
cohousing.

Dave
Cornerstone (15 Full Member households and growing!)

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