Schools like Yale, University of Chicago, and Notre Dame have found an alternative in the residential college system, an option that students there say fosters community in a way that we don’t see here at Columbia.
Competing in inter-dorm sports, knowing the names of every person in their residence halls, and passing on house-specific traditions from one class to the next are essential parts of the culture at schools that use the residential college system.
It’s no secret that Columbia has very little school spirit, and that is mirrored in students’ lack of enthusiasm about housing. Sarah Chapin, a sophomore at Yale, links Yale’s residential college system with the school’s ability to foster school spirit.
“Overall school college spirit is also a big deal on campus,” she says in an email. “Everyone here has a lot of Yale gear, but people also have a lot of residential college spirit wear as well. From t-shirts, to bags, to socks, to fleece jackets with our crest on it, people are showing off pride in their college!”
Notre Dame has the same kind of gear, competitions, and spirit as Yale. Students treat their dorms like fraternities and sororities, as they are separated by gender and have huge rivalries among the residence halls.
Emily Casey, a first-year at Notre Dame who serves on her hall council, explains this culture of Notre Dame housing by comparing it to Greek life. “Everyone has dorm pride and section pride and even dining hall pride, depending on where you live on campus. Everyone will tell you their dorm is the best dorm. I would call it a sorority, honestly.”
Michaelides explains how he enjoyed the tight-knit community at UChicago, which includes multiple residential houses within each residence hall. There, students become especially bonded to their houses, and he says that it is easier for first-years to make immediate homes.
“At Columbia, housing is just a lot less centralized. People are less attached to the places they live,” he says.
Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to find a residential community at Columbia that boasts any of the pride that Casey and Chapin see in their schools. It might occur at a fraternity or a special-interest community, but certainly not in regular housing. Where Yale, Notre Dame, and UChicago succeed is in giving students a reason to identify with their housing.
Dana Scott, who transferred from UChicago to Columbia, then back to UChicago, and is now a sophomore, thinks the UChicago housing system also encourages a better community feeling on campus.
“I would definitely say Columbia, as a community, doesn’t have a distinct tight-knit feel that UChicago has,” she says. “At UChicago, there are more mechanisms to build community that you don’t have to actively look for. At Columbia, you have to find your way a lot more.”
“From the first-years I interacted with, it seems like housing wasn’t a big part of their lives and not where they met most of the people they interact with. At Columbia, people organize their social lives around their extracurriculars,” she says, “whereas at UChicago, people also socialize with peers in their extracurriculars, but they, at least, have the option to organize their social lives around the people they live with.”
UChicago also has more options for students to live in either a larger or smaller dorm, based on the residential experience they are looking for.
“There’s also a lot of variety that the UChicago system has. You can kind of self-select your preferences before you come here between smaller, tighter-knit [houses] and bigger houses:
Twenty-five or 30 kids to 120 or so. You can find a tight-knit experience if you want that, or a bigger, typical dorm system,” Scott says. “At Columbia, if you’re a first-year, your options are almost exclusively big dorms.”
“The way UChicago structures orientation helps a lot,” Scott says. “I had two very different orientation experiences. My UChicago orientation experience was with people from my house. It wasn’t like NSOP, with random people from all across the incoming class.”
“Structuring orientation to live and interact with the same people you’ll live with all year immediately helps create a sense of community so you know and are comfortable with 50 or more people by the end of your first week on campus,” she adds.