Seniors come and go at four-year colleges

Though the four-year residential college system is too new to produce any reliable trends, more members of the Class of 2009 switched out of the system for their senior year than chose to join it, statistics show.

For the Class of 2009, the first class to experience two years of the four-year residential college program, 5.5 percent switched from four-year residential colleges to upperclass housing this year, while 2.5 percent of the class moved from upperclass housing to a four-year college, according to statistics from the housing department.

Of this year’s seniors, 77 percent have chosen upperclass housing for both the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years, while 15 percent remained in four-year colleges for both 2007-08 and 2008-09.

Undergraduate Housing Manager Angela Hodgeman said in an e-mail that the net 3 percent decrease in the number of seniors housed in four-year colleges is a reflection of the number of spaces available to the Class of 2009 and not of students choosing to drop out of four-year colleges.

Hodgeman said that the Housing Department is currently reviewing the number of bed spaces allocated to upperclass students in room draw.

“A lot of students get closed out of the colleges due to the limited number of spaces available for upperclassmen,” Hodgeman said. “There were many more students that wanted spaces in the colleges than were able to draw rooms.”

Personal decisions

Some of the students who chose to switch from a four-year college to upperclass housing this year noted that their choices were personal.

Rob Weiss ’09, who lived in Whitman last year but is an independent this year, entered both the four-year and upperclass draws with two different groups of friends. Ultimately, he chose to live in upperclass housing because he said he “wanted a change of scene.”

Weiss said he was pleased with the size of his room last year and called the good food in the Whitman dining hall “an unexpected blessing.”

Nevertheless, he noted that, as a junior living in a building occupied primarily by freshmen and sophomores, “you feel a little out of place, and it’s a little more difficult to find people you know and want to eat with. You have a situation where you’re confronted with eating with a lot of freshmen and sophomores.”

Juliana Yhee ’09 said she chose to live in Whitman last year largely because there was no available space in upperclass housing after she returned from studying abroad during her sophomore spring.

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This year, like Weiss, Yhee said she wanted a “change of pace.”

“I personally don’t think there’s much difference between being in an eating club and a residential college,” Yhee said. “I don’t think my social life was impacted just because I was in a residential college during my junior year.”

Yhee noted, however, “I never really clicked with any freshmen and sophomores while I was there.”

Alex Petrescu ’09 said that he believed Whitman’s size prevented him from meeting new people, unlike his old residential college, Forbes.

“Because [Forbes is] so packed together, many people know many people, because you have those very long corridors — as opposed to Rocky, where you have entries, and people don’t see many other people,” he said.

Though Whitman has the same long corridors conducive to socializing, he noted that its size kept it from feeling as “homey” as Forbes did.

Petrescu said that he had switched out of Whitman largely for practical reasons. His roommate from last year failed to obtain a shared meal plan, and “if you live in a four-year, you have to buy a minimal plan, which is not profitable if you have a full meal option somewhere else,” he explained.

He noted that after dropping his eating club and becoming independent, he can live in upperclass housing and eat at Whitman simply by charging meals to his student account.

And, for some students, housing is not life-changing either way.

“I’m happy with my decision,” Yhee said, “but I don’t think I would have been unhappy had I stayed in a four-year college.”