I returned to my room a week ago Monday to find a few flyers shoved under my door. Expecting the usual advertisements for upcoming events and maybe a take-out menu or two, I was surprised to find a small pink ...(back to the article)
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great article. the author seems to have read my mind (i never was sure if i was just being a miser or if others shared my dissatisfaction). as a sophomore transplant in whitman, i saw my rca maybe two times all year and i am sad to say that i never really got to know any new people in whitman; all my whitman friends were people i'd met elsewhere. while i must say i can't complain about good food and free beach towels, i will be glad to be out of whitman as a junior.
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This column brings up the hard realities of implementing residential colleges, and I can only hope the administration reads this. They probably will, and Nancy will probably dismiss it immediately, as she does nearly any and all criticism about her beloved vision of residential college utopia. It simply boggles my mind how the administration has gotten the concept of residential colleges so wrong. Let's face it; in a few years, Whitman will not become this desirable location everyone seems to make it out to be. After its superficial cleanliness wears off, what will drive students to Whitman instead of Rocky-Mathey (real vision of neo-gothic splendor and charm) and the new Butler (huge rooms with private bathrooms in the center of campus)? Whitman suffers from poor architecture, bland styling, and the grandiosity of a castle with the charm and character of your local Walmart. The rooms are average-sized and mediocre, their food is extremely over-hyped (tacos for everybody!), their amenities are few, and the sheer immensity of the college, while taking up nearly half of down campus, cannot foster and sustain a community. Instead, we have to suffer from a size 8,000 font type face blaring "WHITMAN COLLEGE," which is almost as ostentatious as that annoying nouveau-riche aunt of yours. Almost. Residential colleges at Yale work for several distinct reasons that cannot be replicated here: -> Almost all of the 12 residential colleges at Yale are physically self-contained, surrounding their own small courtyards. Is there any surprise that residents of Holder Hall are unusually tighter, even though Rocky is only a (GASP!) two-year college? Compare Holder and Yale's colleges to Princeton's colleges, where one cannot tell where Mathey ends and Rocky begins. In fact, Mathey should be a study in residential college diaspora: There is a little bit of Mathey in no fewer than six different buildings, stretching from the northernmost border of campus all the way down to Dillon Gym. -> Not only is each college at Yale physically smaller, but they house fewer students -- around 400 students, as opposed to more than 500 each at Princeton. The administration here touts how the University spent $136 million on Whitman for 500 students. Yale has budgeted over $600 million to build two new residential colleges that will house only 400 students each. Clearly, Yale wanted to do it right and prevent a mess (i.e. Whitman). -> Yale doesn't have eating clubs -- or any sort of organization -- that sucks up 80% of upperclassmen away from residential college life. Furthermore, Yale gives students the option of transferring to another college. That way, if most of your friends are in other college, you can be together. Unfortunately, this sort of stuff happens all the time here, but we aren't allowed to transfer and are forced to live wherever a computer in West College assigned us before we arrived on campus freshmen year. -> Yale has more undergraduates than Princeton. If anything, an argument can be made that Princeton is both numerically and physically (campus-wise) small enough that we simply don't need the residential college communities that are necessary at Yale. After all, you can't frolic around New Haven; you'll get mugged. -> Yale's colleges have actual identities. Some are famous for their formals, while others have their own squash courts. Here, the identity of a college is primarily based on only its physical attributes: Butler is down campus and was ugly, Rocky is up campus and pretty. Unfortunately, college identity runs no deeper here. Sorry for the rant, but as a resident in Mathey, I've become frustrated by the administration's blind pursuit of an ideal without stopping to reflect on the results and the efficacy of their master plan. I have no sense of identity with Mathey after living here for two years. Most of my friends are down campus, and my RCA didn't even have me on her roster until well into spring semester. Let's just call the situation as it is: bad. The administration should go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that works for Princeton students, at Princeton.
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Awesome article, finally someone from the inside realizes how RIDICULOUSLY exclusive whitman is! And this just breeds hatred for whitman from other students from other residential colleges.
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Great article, Margaret!
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I agree that the RCA system could use some work... the upperclass students on my hall have not once been invited to a study break, and the RCA on my hall has never made an attempt to talk to any of the upperclassmen on our hall. (Granted, I'm not sure he has spoken to the freshmen, either...)
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All we got in Mathey was a pair of horrendously ugly pajama pants freshman year and a rain coat that did nothing to shield from rainfall sophomore year. The colleges consitently show signs of inequality (not just resulting from different resources, but also from poor administration decisions regarding what college members want). Get used to it: the U doesn't show much concern that this be changed.
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Good point about the RCAs. My RCA, who lives next door to me, never introduced himself at the beginning of the year. Still hasn't. Acknowledging that I exist would be a good first step towards building more Whitman unity.
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"While serious credit must go to Chip and the rest of the college council, exclusiveness is not the way to create a close-knit community." Actually, exclusivity is one of the best ways to create a close-knit community. Smaller, more cohesive groups allow people to get to know one another better, and forming those kinds of groups is impossible without some kind of artificial sorting mechanism. The fact that Whitman can't discriminate based on interest, race, activities, etc., it has to use the blunt instrument of random exclusion through numbers. That obviously doesn't fit into the University's desired narrative though.
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Great article. While serious credit must go to Chip and the rest of the college council, exclusiveness is not the way to create a close-knit community. You can give Whitmanites all of the free stuff they could imagine, but if members of an RCA group don't even know each other, that's a serious problem that members-only College Nights are not going to fix. Community starts in the dorms, not at ill-attended college nights that alienate Whitmanites from the rest of the university and vice-versa. College night was a good way to mitigate overcrowding, but now that people are over Whitman's food I think it's time to move on to better (and less exclusive) ways to both build the Whitman community and integrate Whitman into the larger residential college system, which won't be possible if Whitman is reviled by the rest of the University.
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Difficult to change Whitman? Princeton's residential colleges have practically no institutional memory. In any case, the disparity between the colleges is nothing new--Rocky has always been better funded, with better food and better facilities than Butler-Wilson. Whitman is just nicer newer and shinier, but it will lose its sheen soon enough. College Night, though I have to agree that it is moronic, I think was an ill-advised but well-intentioned attempt to fix the overcrowding in the dining hall. I hate the new flickering LED things. I also don't think all the free Whitman junk will be given out for long; this is an inaugural year. I admit, I was skeptical about the guest pass--but it turned out to just be a joke, so, whatever. If anything, I'd be more concerned about the social class drinking hour. Also, I'm not sure I would call Whitman elitist, not unless I was joking. It's pretty random how one gets in...
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If the university is trying to encourage elitism and social apartheid, they might as well just send a check to Ivy every year instead of funding these ridiculous and unattended events at whitman.
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Hear, hear! Great article.
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