Sidebars
Explanations and Iterations
Location, Location, Location
EVERYONE
WAS SWEATING on May 19. It was 85 degrees on campus. Shirtless
Sigma Chis were setting up another one of their shindigs, and the palm
fronds they’d arched along their front pathway at 11 a.m. were wilting
within the hour. On the Coffee House patio, clusters of iced-coffee drinkers
clung to the shade.
Undergraduates had another reason to sweat: May 19 was Day One of Run
Weekend in the housing office. Run Weekend marks the last step of the
Draw, the annual process that determines where the next fall’s upperclassmen—members
of housed fraternities and sororities excepted—will live. (Freshmen
are simply assigned their rooms.) It’s about scoring a sweet pad,
but it’s also about finding yourself: figuring out who your friends
are and how the place you’ll call home reflects you. Whether you’re
a vegetarian (Synergy), a partier (Lambda Nu), a performing artist (Kimball),
a community servicer (Lantana), lucky (Robert Moore South, officially
known as “Bob”) or unlucky (Wilbur Hall).
Part lottery, part strategy, the Draw is as central to the Stanford experience
as a distaste for Cal. And it elicits nearly as much hissing.
“It goes without saying that May is stressful for all freshmen, sophomores
and juniors, and largely for one reason,” blasted an editorial in
the Stanford Daily earlier that week. “Draw.”
Out on Wilbur Field at the annual Rinc-a-Delt bash that sizzling day last
May, six Rinconada freshmen—Sundeep Bhat, Albert Chen, Nic Kanaan,
Stephen Ku, Achyut Phadke and Chris Wallis—were in the home stretch
of their first Draw cycle. They’d followed the requisite steps to
a T. Formed a Draw group. Soldiered their way through the “red packet,”
the University-issued guide to the Draw (which, according to their resident
assistant, Dan Hsia, is as user-friendly as the Constitution). Registered
their group on Axess, the online student information network (code name:
Toledo, Sundeep’s hometown). Been assigned a random lottery number
(withheld here for the sake of suspense). Entered their eight housing
choices into the system.
As this group—let’s call them the Toledo Six—licked melting
snow cones off their fingers and stuffed limp slices of pizza down the
hatch, their fate was being run through a fleet of computers in the housing
assignment office on the third floor of Old Union. Ceiling fans sliced
the heavy air above. Employees squinted at screens, entering codes and
more codes. The printer occasionally whined forth a report. The printer
occasionally jammed. “Has anyone seen The Mummy II?”
someone wanted to know.
The six-member housing assignment team would work past midnight that night
and the next as the custom Draw software ran its complex algorithm, placing
groups of up to eight students into the best available choices on their
Draw cards. The lower the Draw number, the better a group’s chances.
It would take less than 15 minutes for the program to slot 3,903 students
into 58 houses. It would take hours more for the housing assignment team
to analyze the results, making sure that gender is balanced in every dorm
and the correct number of spaces have been reserved for incoming freshmen
and residence staff. Problems are identified, recoded and transmitted
to the program, which goes back to its number crunching.
“We might start to get a little punchy later in the day,” said
Todd Benson, director of housing assignment services, whose upper lip
sprouted small beads of sweat.
From a peg on the back of his office door hung a leather hat, the kind
of hat one would wear on a safari or into the Australian outback. Perhaps
Benson, MA ’87, PhD ’94, had chosen it especially for this heated
day of the Draw, which is itself an adventure—not life-endangering,
but potentially life-changing, with the serendipity of housing assignments
resulting in friendships, romances, maybe even multimillion-dollar business
ventures—?
“No, that’s just my hat,” said Benson.
Somewhere in the row of computers behind him, the contours of the Toledo
Six’s sophomore year were taking shape. How much space they’d
have. How much privacy. How many computers in their computer cluster.
Who would feed them. How far they’d have to bike to class. Whether
they’d have a pool table, ping-pong table or foosball table.
In just seven days, they’d know.
WHATEVER. It’s only a dorm room, isn’t
it?
Consider this: the day after the Daily ran the aforementioned editorial,
an alumna sent in a letter to the editor bemoaning her “terrible
Draw number” for sophomore year. An alumna from the Class of 1973.
Back in those days, students were guaranteed only three years of housing.
But since the opening of the three Manzanita Park dorms (Kimball, Lantana
and Castaño) in the early 1990s, the University has offered housing
to all undergrads who want it—even leasing and subletting apartments
in a nearby Menlo Park complex to meet recent high demand.
Today, the Draw answers the question of where you will get housing
instead of whether. Students are allotted two years of “preferred”
status (receiving a Draw number between 1 and 2,000) and one unpreferred
year (drawing a number between 2,001 and 3,000). Stanford provides preferred
years, the red packet explains, because “students deserve a fair
chance to live somewhere nice on campus.” Which suggests that some
places are nicer than others. Indeed, the range of housing options is
wide—distressingly wide, students argue. Draw 50, and you could end
up in your own lakefront room in Lambda Nu (see map, page 77). Draw 2,150,
and you could end up, as that 1973 alumna did, in an extra-cozy one-room
double in what she called “good old Wilbur.”
“Our housing stock is not yet and may not ever be fully equal in
terms of perceived quality,” says Keith Guy, former associate vice
provost of residential and dining enterprises. Guy, who retired at the
end of the summer, has overseen Stanford’s $260 million Capital Improvement
Program, which began in 1992. When it is completed in 2008, the project
will have renovated every residence, in addition to constructing a few
new ones. The aim is to encourage students to choose housing for its experience
instead of its aesthetics.
That idea is at the very core of the University’s commitment to residential
education. Housing, goes the Stanford philosophy, is ideally more than
a spot to sleep and eat—it’s a place to learn and to build community.
Almost one-third of Stanford’s stock falls into the category of theme
and focus houses, such as Casa Italiana, Kimball (performing arts) and
Ujamaa (African-American). These options add another wrinkle to Draw procedure.
A student who demonstrates an interest in a theme or focus can be awarded
a priority for the corresponding residence. Each house sets its own prerequisites.
Kimball, for example, requires prospective residents to draft proposals
for programs they might run in the dorm—say, a musical exchange in
which students swap instruments and learn to play them on the spot. Fewer
than half of its 150 applicants were granted priority for the upcoming
year.
In academic theme houses, all rooms can be filled with priority residents.
In focus houses and ethnic theme houses, one-fourth to one-half can. Although
priority doesn’t guarantee placement in a particular house, it generally
enables students who draw comparatively poorly to get into houses before
students who draw better. For example, a group of four women with Draw
number 2,237 and a priority got into Kimball this year. A group of four
women with number 1,192 and no priority would not have.
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| FUN AND GAMES: Achyut, Stephen, Sundeep and Nic have bonded over cricket in the hallway and foosball in the lounge. Next, they're hoping to play their Draw cards right. |
The University is always tinkering with the housing system to make sure
it meets its aims—replacing an American Studies theme with one in
comparative studies in race and ethnicity, for example. In 1999, the University
made a dramatic change in Draw procedure: assigning students their numbers
before they rank their housing preferences. That reversal enables students
to fill out their Draw cards more strategically. “It manages expectations
a little better,” says Guy.
Definitely. But it hasn’t done much to manage bewilderment. “Too
confusing” is one of the many barbs that students shoot the Draw’s
way (not to mention “unfair,” “inconsistent,” even
“sucky”). And confusion is not a state of mind that’s comfortable
for Stanford students. They’re pretty used to nailing down concepts.
“People always say, ‘Oh, God, it’s so complicated,’”
says Benson, who has a demeanor that can fairly be described as chipper.
“But it’s much simpler than they think.” He likens the
Draw to card tournaments (where priorities are like trumps) and rounds
of musical chairs (where groups are like players). In yet another analogy,
he suggests picturing the computer program as a bouncer at the door of
these friendly competitions.
But it gets a little complicated.
Suffice it to say that no other university plays games quite the way Stanford
does. After freshman year, Harvard students are randomly assigned to one
of 12 houses, where they usually stay until they graduate. Berkeley simply
offers little housing. Of its 22,000 undergrads, 17,000 live off campus.
Priority goes to Regents scholars, athletes, disabled students and those
who have never lived in university housing.
The Stanford Draw might be grounded in a sort of empathetic equity: you
tell us where you want to live and we’ll do our best to put you there.
This empathy has a cost: $350,000 per year, by Benson’s estimate.
But in the end, it comes down to numbers of a different sort. Random numbers.
Some discouraging numbers, too, which can overshadow all else. One in
eight applicants gets into Stanford. One in 75 students will have the
chance to live in Bob in any given year.
And even if you land that coveted spot in Bob, you could end up in one
of its two one-room triples. At the in-house Draws, which are independently
run by each house later in the spring, students vie for the best rooms,
praying for one of the 327 hallowed singles available campuswide. Seniors
and returning residents tend to get top dibs.
“Any time you have a situation with an element of chance that you
can’t control,” says Benson, “it’s going to be frustrating
for someone.” That’s especially true for Stanford students,
one or two of whom might have traces of Type A in their blood.
And it’s even truer for the inhabitants of an all-frosh dorm. During
spring quarter, the Draw approaches like an asteroid, one great big reality
check headed their way. That woo-hoo! dorm unity fostered all year at
parties and ski trips and kooky ice cream troughs is about to be blown
apart.
TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE DEADLINE for forming
Draw groups last May, two of Rinconada’s RAs—seniors Tress Goodwin
and Dan Hsia—ran a Q&A session on the Draw to explain, demystify,
drill in deadlines, re-explain. The tone was tense. The RAs, whose traditional
roles are divided between cheerleading and coddling, were all business.
“Where would you live, Tress?”
“I’d worry about getting a Draw number first,” says Goodwin.
“How well did Bob draw last year?”
“Read the red packet,” says Hsia.
“The red packet sucks.”
One woman, nervously teething a straw, spins metaphors that are a far
cry from Benson’s fun-and-games take on things. (“It’s
like applying to college. . . . It’s like the draft.”) Goodwin
and Hsia dish up cautionary tales of people who “screwed themselves”
in Draws past. Someone who’d entered Naranja instead of the much
more appealing Narnia and wasted their primo Draw number. One group that
drew 120 and got cocky; they’d only listed Bob on their Draw cards
and wound up in Mirrielees when Bob’s cutoff ended up being 110.
Everyone laughs at Goodwin’s bad luck: she drew 1,453 her freshman
year and was banished to the all-women’s Row house, Roth, which she
dubbed the Library of Hate and Anger. “I’m getting the theme
that overconfidence is deadly,” says one of her frosh. “Be scared,”
Goodwin admonishes. “Be very scared.”
The Toledo Six aren’t scared. They know who they are. A strategic
six-pack, six being the most flexible Draw group size—easy to split
into double or triple rooms as the situation necessitates. Since early
March, they have been a cohesive unit with no forbearance for cling-ons
or mutineers.
“Steadfast,” says Nic, who is the sole member to have felt occasional
outside lures. He considered drawing with his girlfriend until she pledged
Pi Beta Phi. He’s also rushing a fraternity, though he claims to
be in it for the free “refreshments.”
The Toledo Six have a convincing advantage over other groups. Namely,
a visionary. That’s Achyut, a.k.a. Draw Master. The Draw has been
on Achyut’s mind for precisely 365 days, the year that has elapsed
since he first came across a mention of the process in the Stanford
Daily when he visited campus as a high school senior.
“After getting used to living here, I thought back . . . I checked
out the Draw website. I was wondering what size Draw group we’d want.
Well, I’d want,” he says, trailing off slightly. “It’s
embarrassing, actually.”
He settled on a group of six, and by mid-October, the Worcester, Mass.,
native with an eccentric streak (he admits to vacuuming as pastime) was
in informal recruiting mode.
Target No. 1: Sundeep, who’d attended a Sanskriti Indian student
meeting with him first quarter. Sundeep is a graphics editor at the Daily
and has a long, easy stride that hints at his calm nature. He also lives
on the third floor of Rinconada, which opened up new vistas for first-floor
dweller Achyut.
There’s Nic, a rock climber and skier from Visalia, Calif., who took
six classes with Sundeep and is in possession of an impressive collection
of cologne. His favorite is something called Business Man.
Two doors down: Chris, a Sacramento native with the lanky build of a skateboarder
and Smurf-blue hair. Chris says his room is usually in “hellish”
condition. He is sometimes “completely nocturnal.” As far as
Draw procedures go, he concedes he’s “pretty clueless.”
At the end of the hall: Albert, a 17-year-old from Poughkeepsie, N.Y.,
who skipped two grades and is Rinconada’s secretary; and across from
him, Stephen, a San Franciscan with a low-key, self-deprecating sense
of humor. (“I’m a slow reader,” he admits. “I just
think to myself, ‘I’m getting this more than the people who
are reading fast.’”)
None of the six are roommates (yet). None have major gripes with their
current roommates, either. Except for Achyut, their rooms occupy one end
of the third floor. They’ve been a strong dorm presence, say their
ras. They sang Blind Melon and Blink 182 covers at a recent party. At
another, they ruled the karaoke machine. They play cricket and soccer
in the hallway. They contemplated founding a secret society inspired by
the cheesy film thriller The Skulls. They’re frequent customers
of a video game called Counter-Strike (“first-person shooter,”
they say by way of explanation).
“The people I’m drawing with,” says Stephen, “obviously
I think are highly cool.”
Indeed, all is cool with the Toledo Six. Highly cool. But the rest of
Rinconada is not without woes. One woman, rejected at the last minute
from a four-person Draw group, will have to draw alone. Two guys who considered
Sundeep a potential Drawmate weren’t invited aboard the Toledo Six.
“I asked my friend Sundeep what he was going to do, and he said he
was going with a six-person draw,” says one. “So that sort of
shuts the both of us out.”
Benson has more painful tales to tell, like that of the group of women
who didn’t inform one of their Drawmates they had all agreed to exclude
her by quietly selecting different houses. Because the University keeps
individual students’ choices confidential, Benson’s office can
only talk to such group members “in general terms,” he says.
“We have to tell them, ‘Well, you have to work this out amongst
yourselves.’”
The Toledo Six have set their sights on Toyon Hall, a 200-person dorm
that turned all-sophomore in 1999 and was renovated in 2000. They want
the single-class unity, a continuation of the dorm spirit they’ve
had in Rinconada.
They’re nodding at this decision at a meeting in late April. Everyone
is sitting in Nic’s room, except for Achyut, who is standing, quietly
commanding attention like a courtroom lawyer. They defer specifics to
him.
“A good number that will get us into Toyon is 650, maybe 700,”
he says, casually resting his elbow against the lofted bed. “The
odds of that are maybe 1 in 3. Not horrible.”
So what is the most horrible thing that could happen?
“We could die,” says Nic.
“We could die of anxiety,” Chris says, even more ironically.
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| WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY: Albert (top and right) and Achyut scan the list for his housing assignment, hoping for their first choice. |
BEGINNING IN THE LATE 1940S, the first housing
draws were run exclusively for women, most of whom were required to live
on campus (freshman men lived in Encina; upperclassmen lived in fraternities
and eating clubs or off campus). Housed sororities had been banned in
1944 because of the distress they caused some women who weren’t offered
bids. Women were assigned to Roble or Lagunita, and then to some of the
all-women’s houses on the Row, such as Storey and Stillman. One hundred
were allowed to live off campus. The Draw determined which ones.
In the late 1960s, Stanford’s housing landscape began to change.
The first focus houses, which were coed, were introduced. More students
began going overseas. Silicon Valley experienced its first high-tech boom,
which led, predictably, to a housing crunch in Palo Alto. Until the mid-’70s,
downtown apartment complexes offered students dirt-cheap rent, including
a gratis first month and summer storage.
“I know, hard to believe,” says Sally Mahoney, MS ’93,
who was associate dean of residential education at the time and recently
retired as president of Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.
These forces began to act on the housing system, she says, and the all-student
Draw was born in 1969. In the years since, it has gotten more and more
complex. Priority for returning residents was added in the early 1970s—and
phased out in the late ’80s. Focus houses with limited priority spots
were first included in 1987. And in 1999, the University decided to allow
Draw groups more flexibility. Students can decide whether it’s worth
it to split up, for example, if some can get into their first-choice house
and the rest into their second. Group members can also make the same initial,
say, four selections but vary the remaining four.
Perhaps the most mourned change to the Draw concerns its loss of meaning
as a verb. Until 1995, students retrieved numbers by physically drawing
a slip of paper from a box. There were annual themes, such as the year
all of the numbers were tucked into fortune cookies. It was televised
and broadcast on kzsu. But efficiency has supplanted creativity, and Draw
numbers are now generated and assigned by computer, printed on long sheets
of white paper and taped to the glass doors of residence halls.
AT THE WILBUR HALL OFFICE ON MAY 9, five of
the Toledo Six are scanning the 12-point font. The sole absentee is Stephen,
who is shackled to Chem Lab (no excuses necessary).
Albert is wearing his lucky jade Buddha necklace, which might be superfluous.
Everyone claims to have fortune pumping in his veins. That is, everyone
but Sundeep, who recently experienced three bike accidents in three days.
The Toledo Six know some things. The number 1999 is already out. Rumor
has it someone in Otero charitably nabbed that. Number 2 is gone, too.
That’s been squirreled away by a student from Sundeep’s writing
class. But 1998 is still out there, not to mention 1997, 1996 . . .
“Why think about bad things?” Achyut wonders.
Albert finds the number first. “693,” he says in a quiet voice.
“693?”
“693.”
They’re excited in a tempered kind of way. Nic and Albert exchange
a gentle low-five.
“We didn’t get completely shafted,” says Chris. “To
tell you the truth, I still don’t know what’s going on.”
Achyut looks relieved. “I was fixated on the number 1,460.”
“Is that your SAT score?” asks Albert.
“No,” he says, very quickly.
The next night, they log on to Axess to enter their choices. Toyon on
top, then a couple of Row houses, two Lagunita dorms, Kimball, Murray
and Arroyo as a safety (good old Wilbur). They assume they’re as
good as into Toyon. The cutoff Draw number for a group of six men last
year was 1,176.
Anyway, there’s nothing they can do about it now. Their destiny is
being determined by those computers on the third floor of Old Union.
Each year, the Draw’s sole certainty is its ability to inspire debate—and
calls for reform. The most recent change bandied about is adding a “premier
year,” in which students would draw from the 1 to 1,000 pool. The
University decided against the proposal in 1999, but proponents—including
last spring’s Daily editorial board—have been vocal enough that
it will likely be reconsidered.
The most constant target of criticism is the Disability Draw, which is
run separately from the regular Draw. The myth is floating that students
can invent disabilities (“asthma” or “circulatory problems”)
and get into a hot spot like Bob. The fact is, says Benson, each disabled
student draws a number and is placed in a house with a cutoff on par with
that number. The Disability Draw exists simply to ensure that students
live in houses that can reasonably accommodate their disabilities.
Of course, there will always be something to complain about. A cruel twist
of fate that, as illustrated by that 1973 alumna, is hard to let go of
even 30 years later. An inkling of injustice. A bone to pick with the
bureaucracy.
A sinking realization that when chance is involved, assumptions can be
risky.
Such as the assumption that 693 is a good enough number to get six freshman
guys into Toyon. The cutoff for male groups of six this year ends up being
690. The Toledo Six have some tough news to swallow: they were just one
group away from their first choice. Instead, they are assigned to their
fourth: Eucalipto, a four-class dorm in Lagunita Court.
“It’s crazy,” says their Draw Master. “I guess I was
a little surprised.”
How about disappointed? Oh yes, they were disappointed. They took some
of that out on Rinconada’s foosball table. Never have those little
plastic soccer players kicked so powerfully.
Then the Toledo Six left.
They pushed open the front doors of Rinconada, crossed Wilbur Field, passed
the Bookstore and Tresidder Union, headed west on Santa Teresa Street
and then up the shaded front entrance of Lagunita Court. They found the
cream-colored stucco of Eucalipto and walked the hallways of their new
home. It was a lot quieter than Rinconada. Few doors were open. No one
was sitting in the hallways, hanging around waiting for someone to talk
to, it didn’t matter who. There was no foosball table.
They searched for things to ease the sting. The “big freaking doubles.”
The good dinner (minus the raspberry tart that “tasted like baking
soda”). The proximity to Lake Lagunita. Chris’s sense of humor.
“I didn’t even know that Eucalipto was one of our choices,”
Chris remarked. “I can’t even remember the name of it half the
time. I say Europe or something.”
The Six looked around a little more. Then they decided to go home, to
Rinconada.
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| REVELATION: The dorm is revealed. |
A FEW WEEKS LATER, the Toledo Six attended
the in-house Draw for Eucalipto. It didn’t provide much in the way
of reparations. There were 17 singles available. But the Six had no seniority,
and pulled mediocre numbers. The group decided to grab a triple and a
large double. One person would take a chance at a single— but risked
ending up in a double with a random roommate. One of them needed to volunteer.
It’s been almost 18 months since Achyut first heard about the Draw
and started pondering a Method. He planned. He strategized. He pulled
together a highly cool Draw group. And he even scored a decent number.
But come mid-September, the Draw Master will find himself living in a
one-room Lagunita double with a stranger.
Marisa Milanese,’93, is a writer living in San Francisco.
It shouldn’t be too hard to outsmart the Draw, right? After all,
the housing office is happy to explain how it works. The computer systems
analyst who maintains the University’s custom housing-assignment
software, Rich Wales, is also the author of the notorious “red packet,”
the 23-page guide to Draw procedure. It contains 55 bullet points, 23
tables, six “key implementation concepts” and one worksheet.
Wales, ’75, looks a little disappointed when it’s suggested
that explanations of the explanations are often required. “I’m
a computer nerd. To me, the Draw is transparently obvious,” he says.
“I desperately want people to understand how it works, but nevertheless,
I’ll admit that I probably still am the world’s expert on the
Stanford housing draw.”
Most of the red packet—and much, much more—is online at www.stanford.edu/dept/
hds/has/applying/upperclass/ucapply/index.html. An excerpt:
Assignment Processing
• The Basic Algorithm
The Draw program starts out by tentatively assigning every student to
his/her first residence choice. If (as will normally be the case) some
residences are overfilled, each excess student is pulled out and reassigned
instead to his/her next choice. This process of assigning, pulling out
and reassigning continues until no residence has any excess assignments.
• Focus Priorities and Ethnic Status
After students have been assigned to a focus or cross-cultural residence—but
before excess students are pulled out—a quota enforcement pass is
made to ensure that the residence’s priority quota is not exceeded.
If more students are trying to claim a focus priority or ethnic status
than the residence’s quota allows, the excess students have their
priorities deactivated.
• Improvement Processing
After the program has finished assigning, pulling out and reassigning
students, a thorough check is performed to ensure that each student is
in the best possible assignment.
If any students can qualify for assignment to a better choice, a certain
number of these students are pulled out of their assignments, and the
program reprocesses them.
Since this improvement process could, in theory, lead to an endless loop,
the Draw program runs improvements carefully and within limits designed
to give improvement a reasonable chance, but without taking an inordinate
amount of time. In the tests done on the new Draw program so far, most
runs require no more than two improvement cycles after the initial processing;
the largest number of improvement cycles seen so far is 22.
[ Main Story ]
PRIME
REAL ESTATE (Lambda Nu, Narnia, Lomita, Storey, Grove
Lasuen, Grove Mayfield, Bob and Xanadu) Frosh-free houses on or near the
Row. The best of the best boast both a central campus location and two-room
doubles—pairs of rooms shared by two students. The others offer either
a short bike ride to class or spacious two-room doubles (some with lake
views). All are self-operated—students hire the cook and enjoy after-hours
access to the kitchen. Parties aren’t thrown often at any of these
houses; no one wants them ruined. A few lucky students will stay on the
following year as house staff. Why leave Boardwalk and Park Place unless
you have to?
THINK DIFFERENT (Adams, Schiff, Suites, Toyon, Mirrielees)The all-sophomore
Toyon attracts those who want to relive freshman year. And Freshman-Sophomore
College really makes that possible. This administration pet project gets
lots of money for academic programs, and just about everyone gets a two-room
double. Roth is female-only, though many residents wish otherwise. Mirrielees,
the Suites and Sharon Green go for the apartment feel; the last even comes
with a commute from Menlo Park for authenticity.
BRING YOUR GRANOLA (Synergy, Chi Theta Chi, Columbae, Enchanted
Broccoli Forest, Terra) The model co-op resident sports dreadlocks, Birkenstocks
and thrift-store clothing. That is, if you wear clothing—some Synergy
inhabitants are known to go without, and Chi Theta Chi has coed gym-style
showers. These houses are student-managed; residents take turns preparing
dinner in groups and (allegedly) cleaning the common rooms. While most
accommodate carnivores, Columbae serves only vegetarian food and Synergy
prohibits meat in the kitchen. The co-ops are home to many left-leaning
social activists—Columbae’s website lists one of its traditions
as “fighting the Man”—but the occasional Republican has
been sighted.
LIVING IN EXILE (Roble, Florence Moore, Stern, Wilbur) The Draw
cutoff number approaches infinity here. Food is bad, and the one-room
doubles in Wilbur, Stern and FloMo are cramped (several singles are available
in Roble, however). There are two possible responses to these straits:
resist or adapt. Resisters will spend the entire year avoiding their dorm;
those influenced by frosh spirit may actually get social. Exiles are advised
to obtain priority in a theme house next time. The only thing worse than
living in a concrete-block house two years in a row is living in one three
years in a row.
THEMES AND VARIATIONS (La Casa Italiana, Slavianskii Dom, Haus Mitteleuropa,
La Maison Française, East, Murray, Yost, Robinson, Naranja, Ujamaa,
Kimball, Lantana, Castaño, Okada, Casa Zapata, Muwekma-tah-ruk)
The academic theme houses attract a range of characters. People will study
Italian for a year just to qualify for the inner Row’s Casa Italiana
(and say it was one of the best moves they ever made). But some jump on
the theme bandwagon to avoid exile; you can score a two-room double in
east by planning a project and attending a seminar on East Asian studies.
The focus houses—Kimball (performing arts), Lantana (community service),
Castaño (public policy), Naranja (entrepreneurism), Murray (comparative
studies in race and ethnicity),Yost (human biology) and Robinson (environmental
issues)—also bring in students with bad Draw numbers who happen to
be involved in the featured activity (or pretend that they are). On the
other hand, students choose the cultural theme dorms—Okada (Asian-American),
Ujamaa (African-American), Casa Zapata (Chicano) and Muwekma-tah-ruk (Native
American)—and international co-op Hammarskjöld more for the
community than for the housing.
THE LEFTOVERS (Potter, Lagunita Court, MARS, Phi Sig, 592 Mayfield,
Durand, ZAP, 717 Dolores) What can you say about leftovers? The outer
Row houses have their own cooks, open kitchens and plentiful parking—but
tiny one-room doubles. In the West campus houses, room configurations
are better, but the food is worse. Still, it’s cooler than going
back to Wilbur.
—Jennie Berry, ’01
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