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BY MATT BLEIMAN

In print | Published April 10, 2008

Housing for the 2008-2009 academic year will be slightly different than in previous years. The changes being made are the inclusion of the newly constructed David Kemp Hall, the change in occupancy numbers for the Lodges from five to four students, the change in one-room doubles into singles in Strath Haven, the removal of Mary Lyon basement from the housing lottery and the expansion of gender-neutral bathrooms. There has also been a change made to the lottery itself.

David Kemp Hall will be ready to house students next year. “All of it is at least on schedule and there are pieces that are a little ahead of schedule so it is moving right along,” said Coordinator of Residential Life Liz Derickson ’01. Furniture is expected to be delivered in the middle of May to bring the new dorm to life.

A key project of the committee was assigning blocks to David Kemp Hall. “We looked at what we thought would be the best blocking arrangements based on where rooms worked together and where it was conducive to having a group of friends together,” said housing committee member Mark Kharas ’08. The housing committee assigned a four-person block of two doubles that is intended for sophomores on the second floor of David Kemp.

The committee also has been working to greatly expand gender-neutral housing options on campus. In the past, most of the gender-neutral spaces have been off campus. “We wanted people who have a very strong feeling about wanting a gender neutral space to live to not have to have a very good lottery number to pick into those spaces,” said Kharas. They have worked with the administration to make all of Willets gender-neutral housing but still have gendered bathrooms on all floors, except for the basement.

David Kemp’s first floor will be a gender-neutral hall and have a gender-neutral bathroom. “The physical space requires it because the first floor halls aren’t connected, so if it was single sex bathrooms you would have to go outside,” said housing committee member Karen Minyety ’08.

Due to the addition of David Kemp, Mary Lyon’s basement is going to become overflow housing. This means that the rooms in Mary Lyon basement will not be on the table during the lottery but may be used if extra rooms are needed due to a difference in students going abroad during fall and spring semesters. Minyety said, “No one really chooses to live in ML basement and given that we have a new dorm we didn’t feel it was necessary to make people live there anymore.”

Kharas, who is also the current Resident Associate for Mary Lyon basement, said, “ML basement is not a very good or desirable place to live [in] and I think it is good that it is being eliminated in favor of David Kemp.”

According to Kharas, there is a storage area in the middle wing of the basement that creates a separation between the two residence hallways, which he sees as another good reason for why the basement will become overflow housing.

The extra rooms created by David Kemp have also allowed the housing committee to change some of the one-room doubles in Strath Haven into singles. “We’ve often had juniors and seniors who have clamored for those to be singles but we didn’t have the space to cut them down to singles so I think that’s an exciting change,” said Derickson. The rooms will also allow the administration to turn the lounges, which are currently acting as dorm rooms in Dana and Hallowell, back into lounges.

Another change will allow the Lodges to house four students to a lodge instead of five. The first floor of a lodge is a triple and the second floor is a double. Derickson explained that often, students felt cramped and have attempted to live in the basement, which is considered unsafe to live in.

“Initially we thought we might use the space differently, but there was a strong response from students that they really liked the Lodges and it is a unique living situation that is not really replicated elsewhere,” said Derickson.

The location of the living space, close to the center of campus, was another incentive for the decision to keep students living in the Lodges. Derickson thinks the change to an occupancy of four is a good solution in order to keep the Lodges as housing option. “We’re excited about being able to keep them in the housing pool but hopefully make them a slightly better living situation,” she said.

In addition to the changes in housing, the lottery has also been slightly revamped. There had been some concerns over the fairness of the cohort system, where students may be in the top or bottom of their cohort all three years.

Another concern was that while the blocking system used each individual’s first cohort, the “value” of a given room attained in a block could very well be no better than a room that someone who received a lower number in the lottery could have achieved. “There were some critical thinkers thinking about ways that we could make the system more fair,” said Derickson.

“Two very clever computer science experts, Maggie Ladlow ’09 and George Dahl ’08, developed a computer program that represents some of the basic fundamentals of the cohort system but it goes a step further in that it tries to give everyone as close as possible an average for all three years and pushes students who blocked up only a little,” she said.

The program is designed to distribute lottery numbers so that students who block off of a very bad lottery number will not be treated the same way as students who got their first choice block. This change is effective for the class of 2010. The housing committee worked hard in the past year to implement these changes and make housing as good as possible for the students.

“What we discussed is more on just how to use the spaces that we had and how to make the housing and living experience at Swarthmore as best as it can be,” Kharas said.

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