Community Council Update

On Tuesday, Jan. 8, Community Council approved the Inter-House Council’s (IHC) proposal for second-semester first-years to be eligible for membership in the social house system with 14 members in favor and three opposed. The Council will now send the proposal as a recommendation to President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz for his final approval to make the official policy change as it is presented in the College Handbook.

Dean of the College and Community Council Co-Chair Shirley Collado was one of the three council members who voted in opposition to the IHC’s recommendation.

“In principal, as Dean of the College, I stand behind the real commitment to the first year experience,” said Collado. “I would like to ideally have first years have the opportunity to really understand what [the College] has to offer to get to know different social groups and to get to know different social networks, and I don’t think that you need to be a member of a social house to go and interact with social house members.”

During Tuesday’s meeting, IHC President Zach Marlette ’13, along with former president of the College’s only nationally recognized fraternity, the Alpha Society of Kappa Delta Rho (KDR), Zach Hitchcock ’13.5, distributed a cheat sheet to council members outlining three principal benefits to social life on campus if Liebowitz decides to approve the Community Council’s recommendation.

The benefits included broader inclusion for students to become more familiar with the social house communities, added options for expanding social life opportunities on campus and compensation for what might be lacking in the commons house system as it currently functions.

In coordination with the College’s attempts to discourage liberal amounts of alcohol consumption on campus, Marlette noted that earlier membership in social houses would increase the number of students taking TIPS training, a two and a half hour classroom program provided free of charge by the College that mentors students on how to handle alcohol-related situations in order to prevent injury, drunk driving and vandalism.

He also said that the same idea applies to hazing prevention, as all social house members are now required to participate in the College’s anti-hazing training, a result of last year’s investigation on behalf of the administration of two of the College’s social houses that were accused and acquitted of hazing potential house members during the pledge process.

When charges of hazing were brought up against the social houses, the opportunity to admit new members during the fall 2012 semester was prohibited by the College pending an investigation by Public Safety to determine the validity of the claims. This compromised the houses’ ability to fill beds, making the need to widen the pool of potential pledges to include second-semester freshmen for membership and first-semester sophomores eligible to live in social houses more imperative.

KDR, for example, is expected to fill over half of its house’s beds in the upcoming semesters due to a loss of nearly 30 members when the class of 2013 graduates.

Despite the benefits enumerated in the meeting, there is still a concern from faculty and staff members that implementing the second part of the IHC’s proposal, a resolution that would allow first-semester sophomores to live in the social houses, would cause a mass exodus from the commons system, compromising its integrity and sense of community.

Associate Dean of Students for Residential Life and Student Life Policy Doug Adams read a statement on behalf of the Atwater Commons underlining their collective concern that this proposal would undermine efforts to build the commons system community.

After reading the statement, Adams assured the Council that the social house system accounts for less than ten percent of the student population on campus and would not have a significant impact on the number of students participating in the commons system. Other non-student council members remained apprehensive about social houses potentially jeopardizing the balance between a student’s academics and social life.

It was the opinion of the Atwater Commons’ deans that the exception of social houses on the list of alternative student housing already made available to first-semester sophomores — such as Palana, Weybridge, all language houses, and intentional living houses — is appropriate because of the niche they fill as socially oriented living spaces, whereas the others serve a more academic or community-focused intention.

Student Council member and President of the Student Government Association (SGA) Charlie Arnowitz ’13 responded to the Commons’ letter saying, “Social considerations are made [when students choose to live in Palana or language houses]” and that “the argument seems artificial.”

A unique twist to the College’s policy on first-year eligibility to social house membership is a clause known as the “Feb Loophole.” An exception to the strict “no first-years allowed” policy, this loophole allows students who begin college in February of their freshman year the opportunity to pledge a social house as second-semester freshmen. Hitchcock pitched this exception before the Council on Tuesday asking, “Why not give that opportunity to other [students] who deserve the same?”

When asked about this exception in a later interview, Collado agreed that, “the Feb loophole is a very interesting point.

“I would just say I think we’ve inherited a very unique way of classifying students who are by definition coming into college at a different place in their lives,” she added. “So I don’t have any strong opinions about it.”

The Council is still awaiting Liebowitz’s decision on the first proposal regarding second-semester first-years.