here is a certain feeling you get when you pass by your freshman dorm. The mere sight of the building elicits flashes of the sights and sounds of your first year of college. It was the background to your freshman mistakes and success, triumphs, and defeats. Our assigned dorms become our home away from home — communities built out of radically different backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences that are designed to become the nexus of our social lives for our first year at university. These feelings and reverence for that freshmen community vary widely from school to school, but Stanford puts a distinct focus on this experience, creating an enticing brochure image of residential life for prospective students. But the feelings many have for their first year of housing are not the same for their upperclassmen housing experience.
We jump from the well-defined, intentional freshman experience to the highly randomized and often chaotic selection of housing through the Draw. Many students are jettisoned from the cozy atmosphere of a well-bonded freshman dorm into upperclassmen dorm housing that lacks community or cohesion, forcing students to weigh out the options of different draw groups or pre-assignments. The system has incentivized many to join self-selecting communities in Greek life or row houses with pre-assignment. These are communities that have selection processes outside of the normal procedures of the Draw, allowing students to intentionally choose a residence by opting for Greek rush or pre-assignment interview process and potentially guarantee three years of living on the row. Situations like this are a natural product of a housing system in which housing stock diversity mirrors the complex nature of the school it serves. From themed co-ops, ethnic theme housing (ETH) and Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL) housing to suites and dorm-style housing, the variety available to Stanford students is immense. Though the variation and quality of much of Stanford’s residential experience can be called world-class, many students end up with mediocre residential experiences.
Whether it be the distribution of housing for ethnic dorms, the eurocentrism of the Row or any of the logistical problems with the Draw, there have been long-running complaints regarding the equity of this system. But this isn’t an intentional design―our housing stock is an amalgamation of a myriad of visions from previous administrations and periods. This has given us the most varied and diverse residential experience in the country, especially among our top-level peers. However, it has also created an overall lack of continuity and intentionality outside of pockets of Greek life and some row housing experiences. The importance of the residential experience in college is hard to overstate. The failings of the residential system in these regards are put in an even harsher light when compared to other top level schools whose systems provide the most cohesive experience. As the competition between Stanford and other top level schools intensify, the impetus for Stanford to review and improve its systems is more pressing than ever. Stanford has embarked on a period of institutional soul searching as a result. Recently proposed reforms to the design of majors, freshman year academic experience and possible updates to student governance and the honor code reflect a serious effort by the current administration to update systems throughout the university. But these efforts pale in comparison to the scale of the ResX project in reforming the Stanford residential system.
The ResX commission was a task force formed by Provost Persis Drell in the spring of 2018 to form a comprehensive vision of Stanford housing for the next quarter-century. This task force, made up of professors, resident fellows, alumni and students, worked over the course of a summer to create its final report. The final report is a product of extensive research and analysis of thousands of pieces of feedback, pertinent literature and proposals. The final vision of the commission is one of the boldest laid out by an administration since the university was first conceived. It penned a visionary goal for the future of Stanford housing and more so the university as a whole. The report recommended replacing the existing Draw system with a new network of “neighborhoods,” clusters of housing that students would live in throughout their four years. This neighborhood model is now the foundational concept for Stanford housing moving forward. When the commission published the final report in spring 2019, it sent shockwaves around campus. The plan’s sweeping changes raised serious questions about the future of FSL and ETH housing. The plan also came with a host of reasonable and overdue policy updates, such as changes to residential staffing, freshman roommate selection and other administrative updates.
But the sheer scale of the neighborhood vision demands very serious considerations of its implementation. It comes with obvious logistical questions regarding how it will physically come to be. How will this scale of construction be possible without the General Use Permit which was abandoned this Fall? Where is the funding to reconstruct the entire Stanford housing stock? But these questions are outside of the scope of the ResX report and will be answered over the next several years. What must truly be considered now are the questions surrounding the vision described by this report. How will a university-guided reconstruction of housing affect the character of the Stanford experience? But most important, what does this vision inform us about the priorities our current administration has for the future of Stanford? This story is bigger than a single report or reform―it demands that we take a broad overview of how we got here and how we move forward with this vision.
History of Stanford Housing
The story of Stanford housing begins before the first students arrived at the university. It started several years earlier, in 1894, during the wake of a tragedy. In mourning for the loss of his 15-year-old son to typhoid fever, Leland Stanford said to his wife that “the children of California shall be our children.” This solemn promise informed their new mission in life, to establish a world-class university in honor of their son on their 8100-acre property in Palo Alto, California that would serve both sexes and would seek to train its graduates in the liberal arts as well as the cutting edge of technology and the natural sciences. The Stanfords sought to create a world-class university to give their son a legacy he was never able to create himself. This passion guided their ambitions and drove them on an east coast tour of the country’s best colleges to look for inspiration. After meeting with several university presidents, they eventually secured the council of the president of MIT, General Francis Walker, as an educational consultant for the university. Soon after, on the advice of Walker, they hired Fredrich Olmstead, the esteemed designer of Central Park, to design the master plan of the university. This team of Walker and Olmstead, together with the Boston architecture firm Shipley, Rutan and Coolidge, embarked on creating the university inspired by the vision of the Stanfords.
This pursuit soon proved to be a difficult task, as the Stanfords were stubborn clients to please. Olmstead envisioned the university to look like a naturalistic park. The buildings were to have a more picturesque nature, rather than a formal one. This vision was most apparent in the team’s recommendation for student housing. A system of cottages laid out in a park-like fashion were to serve as the dorms for both men and women. These cottages were to house 15-25 students each and be modestly constructed to reflect the value of a lack of caste system or class divisions among students. This vision of campus housing was superseded by Leland Stanford after his return from a European tour, where he was inspired by a grand hotel in Switzerland that embodied the grandeur that he wanted for the boys’ dormitory and by extension the university as a whole. This grand dormitory was complemented by the first Roble Hall, a more modest building built to house the women of Stanford. They were both completed by the opening of the university in 1891 and housed the pioneer class of the institution.
Conflicts of interest around the vision of Stanford Housing didn’t stop after the first students moved in, and instead intensified. The first dorms came with a host of problems that reflected the growing pains of the new university. The grandiose space of Encina Hall proved to be desirable grounds for the hijinks of adolescents as pranks and hazing became rampant for many of the early years of the university. Attempts to enforce order were stifled by a conflict between the administration of the school and of the estate of the Stanfords, which remained a tight grip on control of the operations of the school. The prevalence of mayhem, in addition to increased room and board costs, led to an exodus of students from Encina Hall and Roble Hall alike. Many opted to rent with other students or form their own living communities. These factors led to the formation of the first fraternities on campus. The Greek system on campus grew quickly―by 1916 there were 24 fraternities and five sororities. These numbers would only grow, resulting in a campus in which two-thirds of students were members of Greek organizations at some point. This growth in independent living was not only found in Greek organizations. Students who didn’t belong to Greek organizations looked for other options in order to find less expensive room and board. It began with students getting food from The Camp, a canteen located where Old Union stands today. Soon students organized their own eating clubs. After a few clubs that only lasted a couple years, a network of clubs based out of Toyon Hall became a tradition on campus. During the early decades of the school dining clubs evolved into hubs of social activity because they provided services for students who couldn’t join the Greek system due to racial or religious reasons, an gave early students of Chicano/Latinx, Asian and Jewish backgrounds the same services and sense of community found in these exclusionary social groups. Admission into these clubs only required signing up at the beginning of the year, making it a form of an egalitarian rebuke against the exclusive nature of Greek life for much of its existence.
These independent strands of residential life only gained more traction after several notable incidents in Encina Hall during Stanford’s early years, one of which included the death of a student that many believe was connected to continuous hazing during his freshman year. The multiple sources of administrative authority initially bogged down the ability of the young university to try and counteract these issues. However, when authority over internal affairs was shifted from the estate office to the administration, and other internal governance reforms followed, affairs within Encina Hall and other residential buildings were stabilized. But a bigger problem soon arose―meeting the demand for increasing enrollment. In the 1920s, Encina Hall was followed by Toyon Hall and Branner Hall as well as expansions to the dining halls and common spaces for Encina Hall. Much of this early development was centered around male dormitories, as female enrollment was capped at 500 students. This was done at the behest of Jane Stanford, who didn’t want a large female student population so Stanford wouldn’t become the “Vassar of the West.” But as the university grew, these standards and some of the original vision began to fade away to accommodate the demands of the new situations.
Development of housing was suspended for a period of time during World War II as a large part of Stanford housing was turned over to the military. After the war, development continued and the modern Stanford housing scene began to take shape. The character of Stanford housing throughout these years became driven by the development of a large, thriving Greek life on campus. Though there were periodic conflicts over Greek life throughout time, its influence wasn’t significantly diminished until the 1960s. Decades-long conflicts over the role of sororities led to their loss of housing due to severe turmoil between non-Greek and Greek women. At the same time, fraternities on campus fell victim to a national trend of declining interest and membership. Many fraternities began to close due to financial hardship, and the introduction of coed housing compounded the issue. The once-foundational component of Greek life soon faded into just a small aspect of campus. Structural changes to Greek housing policies reduced the ability of new houses to be created and of removed fraternities to return to campus. These newly vacant houses became university housing and led to the creation of non-Greek row houses. These row housing situations were unique to Stanford. Non-affiliated students moved in and began to form unique identities for these buildings as more fraternities dissolved, spawning the creation of some of the most notable living communities at Stanford. The conversion of row housing into general use housing occurred throughout the ’80s and ’90s, alongside the establishment of guaranteed housing for all four years. The housing stock was expanded to accommodate the growing population of students, mainly graduate students. The most recent additions in this process being the opening of Ng house in 2015.
The Current Housing System
Stanford’s current housing is the end product of decades of change and evolution, most of which was driven by student initiative. What remains today is a mixture of well-defined all-freshmen dorm complexes, row houses, a small but seemingly resurgent Greek life, ethnic theme housing and numerous other styles of housing. With little pre-established continuity—unlike, for example, a residential college system like Yale’s—students are instead given an opportunity each year to choose their own path through the myriad of options available. Someone could, hypothetically, start in an ethnic-themed house like Ujamaa, move to a Greek house like Kappa Sigma sophomore year, draw into a four-class dorm-like FloMo after going abroad junior year and then spend their final year in a co-op like Terra. This wide swath of choice showcases the university motto “the wind of freedom blows”—more so than many aspects of Stanford, ultimately providing students latitude to craft their own journeys in terms of housing.
At its best, such a housing system gives students an opportunity to form friendships with people they might never have met otherwise. At its worst, however, a student can spend four years at Stanford without ever truly finding a home. Because of the randomness inherent in the Draw system, both outcomes are possible: for every member of Greek Life who meets their best friend in Crothers junior year, there’s a dissatisfied senior who Tier One-d into a basement single in Roble.
Admittedly, the Draw process does have some built-in safeguards against this randomness. By rushing housed Greek organizations, students can hypothetically secure housing for the next three years. Alternatively, students can also apply to pre-assign certain themed houses or co-ops—the process is imperfect, but it provides a degree of intentionality in the otherwise unpredictable draw. These options, in addition to student staffing opportunities, have proven attractive alternatives to the draw for this reason, with over 46 percent of students eligible for the Draw choosing these options to opt out. FSL particularly has seen a boost from this effect, as sororities and fraternities on campus have seen a 123 percent and a 16 percent increase in membership respectively over the last decade. This shows a clear desire by students to get around the draw, if possible, but leads to another issue pointed out by the ResX report. Much of the quantitative feedback received by the committee in regard to the quality of housing showed that FSL housing and row housing was considered by most students as some of the best housing on campus, in terms of the quality of rooms as well as the community and cohesion within these residences. This creates a compounding issue for students who aren’t fully aware of these options or don’t have the drive to try and “game the system” as pointed out in the report. They are left to the random nature of the Draw for their options and are therefore left to contend with a lower quality selection.
These issues are all underlined by problems with the overall efficiency of the system itself. The ResX report noted that students found the Draw process confusing and complex. Though attempts have been made to curb this with FAQ sections and website improvement, it still proves unwieldy for most students. This is most acute for rising sophomores who have no experience with the process. The confusing nature of the system isn’t helped by the Draw routinely leaving students unassigned. This problem has improved dramatically from 2013, when almost six percent of students in the Draw were left unassigned, but leaving more than 100 students unassigned every year suggests room for improvement. The Draw is Stanford’s attempt to allow students the freedom to choose their own housing path, but its unpredictability and complexity have created obstacles for many students.
These issues are highlighted by what remains the most significant problem in the housing system―the sophomore slump. Stanford’s freshman experience is the most intentional and crafted part of Stanford’s housing, but unlike peer institutions’ programs, Stanford’s has no form of continuity after freshman year. Spring quarter brings this reality to the forefront for freshmen as they enter the stressful period of creating draw groups and trying to navigate the system. Many students use options like FSL housing and pre-assignment to find a new community or maintain connections with existing friends. But everyone else, most of whom save their Tier 1 for their senior year, are left to work with what’s left, leaving many students in upper-class dorm housing, split up from the friends and connections of their freshman dorm. Surveys by the ResX committee showed that 40 percent of students living in upperclass dorms didn’t have a sense of belonging in their housing. Upperclass dorms were the worst scoring type of housing in the survey, having 28 percent more students without a feeling of belonging than frosh-style housing. This dissatisfaction reveals the biggest gap in Stanford’s current system. As a system that allows the significant freedom, it suffers from a lack of cohesion over the four years, taking away the support systems and community that many students relied on in their first year and putting students at serious risks for increased anxiety and stress as they continue through their undergraduate years. The risk of increased mental distress is the most concerning of the costs that come with a varied system like Stanford’s.
The ResX Task Force
Issues with the draw process and equity of housing stood out as primary concerns that the commission sought to address. The ResX commission proposed a solution to the Draw system in the form of a new neighborhood system. The plan was guided by four goals:
- Ideal housing configurations for first-year students.
- Ideal neighborhood concept that “prioritizes community and belonging.”
- Ideal staffing assignment.
- Ideal housing assignment process.
The ideal unit to meet these goals was the proposed neighborhoods, a central feature that is to guide all future housing development at Stanford. Each neighborhood will contain all-frosh dorms, upperclassmen housing, suite-style housing and up to three row-style houses. All of these residences would be clustered around green space and shared amenities like common spaces, dining services and other facilities, including art studios. Groups of three to four neighborhoods would share a gym and recreational center. Neighborhoods would offer a succinct microcosm of a student’s currently available housing options and residential resources. Although the report mentions the need for “additional research” to determine the status of Greek life and co-ops, for now, these organizations will be distributed throughout the neighborhoods—there will no longer be a singular “Row” filled almost exclusively with self-ops, co-ops and Greek housing.
Though the report never explicitly mentions other schools, there are clear parallels between the neighborhoods and the housing systems of Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth. The neighborhood system, however, also differs from these systems in several crucial ways.
First, whereas Harvard and Yale wait until sophomore year to assign students to a continuous community—such as a residential college—the ResX report proposes that incoming freshmen will be assigned to a neighborhood before arriving on campus. While freshmen can theoretically opt to reassign to another neighborhood at the end of their first year, the report notes that the newly proposed system will attempt to minimize these cases by preserving the strong community bonds formed in all-frosh dorms for four years.
This move betrays the first of many assumptions that go largely unaddressed in the ResX Report: that maintaining the communities from all-frosh dorms will reduce the issues with “sophomore slump”—and, implicitly, that the vast majority of frosh were wholly satisfied with their frosh dorm experience. Anecdotally, the latter assumption is false—many who have lived in all-frosh dorms can still feel somewhat isolated. One student stated that he often felt his friendships in his dorm formed based on proximity more than anything else, which can leave students vulnerable to feel isolated from older students as well as cliques and groups within their own year.
The caveat of not wanting students to switch neighborhoods raises an initial concern with the vision, which appears to sacrifice true intentionality in the name of minimizing randomness. The ResX recommendations would lock students into a community from the moment they arrive on campus rather than giving them the resources to grow and find their own communities. The Draw may put students into an unfavorable living community for one year, but it doesn’t lock them into a network of housing they dislike for all four years. The potential for students to now be more constrained into situations like this is something all should be wary of. A key to preventing this would be to maximize the number of students who enjoy their neighborhoods. But this leads to a fundamental question which the report never truly answers: who, or what, defines the identity of a neighborhood?
The most concrete recommendations from the commission were on the internal mechanisms of the neighborhood. The proposed system within neighborhoods details several ways for students to create neighborhood identities. The most notable policy in this vein is the neighborhood theme house. Existing row houses and ethnic theme dorms would be divided up amongst the neighborhoods, but each one would also have a theme house, constructed like a row house, that they would be able to define. The theming and programming of these dorms would be created by the students of the neighborhood through their dorms and neighborhood councils. However, these proposed opportunities come with caveats such as approval and review by Resident Fellows and neighborhood-specific faculty.
Such stipulations within the report illuminate the biggest challenge Stanford would face in implementing the neighborhood system. Unlike our Ivy League peers, whose well-integrated, established residential college systems have been around for centuries, this commission must contend with creating a university-designed system that is still driven and shaped by the students. The report lists the ability of students to drive and influence this system as a priority. But whether this intention can be genuinely implemented will remain to be seen over the decades-long process of constructing these neighborhoods. As much as our Ivy League counterparts may provide inspiration for what Stanford’s system could be, they also provide stark insight into just how difficult such a system is to create.
A Big Green Warning
Of all other housing systems, the ResX proposal best resembles Dartmouth’s housing system. Beginning in fall 2016, Dartmouth began placing all undergraduate students in one of six “House communities,” which are scattered across the 237-acre campus (by comparison, Stanford’s campus is 8,180 acres). The intent behind the house communities, which essentially operate as residential colleges, was community-building—in theory, students who spent four years living together were likely to find at least some common ground with their fellow residents.
Reactions to the system, however, have been mixed at best. Austin, a 2019 Dartmouth graduate, was a sophomore when Dartmouth officially shifted to its current housing system. “It was like Harry Potter, where each house had its own logo and activities,” he said. “But it was completely arbitrary—we didn’t have a Sorting Hat to choose for us.”
Like all incoming frosh at Dartmouth, Austin spent his freshman year in one of the first-year dorms. For the first few weeks, he and his floormates were close, but he eventually found friends elsewhere: some in class and others through mutual friends. In the fall of his sophomore year, Austin joined a Greek organization. His decision was driven largely by Dartmouth’s campus culture—60 percent of Dartmouth students participate in Greek life—rather than any sense of isolation that he’d felt; he’d made some close friends by spring of his freshman year, and they stayed close throughout his four years.
While Austin admits that he made some close friends from his house community, he believes those friendships formed as a byproduct of his initiative rather than proximity alone. He’d entered college as a shy, introverted freshman, and only became more comfortable once he’d found his core friend group. “There were some people I got close to sophomore through senior year because we lived on the same floor,” he said, “and we’d just chat while we were brushing our teeth and stuff, but that only happened because I’d developed a more outgoing personality.”
Last September, the Dartmouth administration decided to limit access to house community facilities, such as libraries and residence halls, to residents only, leading to widespread backlash from the student community. While the move wasn’t explicitly geared toward fostering stronger community within each house—the administration’s move occurred in response to several incidents of racial bias and vandalism across different residence halls—for Austin, it exemplified many of the problems with the housing community system. “Communities have to form organically through self-identification and exclusivity,” he said, “and the administration tried to implement the exclusivity part.”
Austin believes the enforced exclusivity only masked deeper problems. “There’s no sense of community when you’re just with random people,” he said.
What’s Next?
The ResX task force’s vision is an ambitious solution that gives a plan for what Stanford housing will become. The neighborhood system will fundamentally change the Stanford experience. If such a system is implemented correctly, it could provide every Stanford student with a support system the second they get on campus that will continue throughout their four years, promoting wellness, health, community, and personal growth. It’s a lofty vision that combines core elements of the Stanford experience with the best practices of top-level universities from around the country. But right now, it is just that―a vision. The new direction signaled by the ResX report leaves a myriad of questions to be answered beyond obvious questions around funding and zoning issues. How long will the construction of these neighborhoods take? What form of neighborhoods will be in place while their physical structures are created? These are questions that future commissions, directors and provosts will have to answer for years to come. Current students and alumni alike should be considering the broader direction this plan signals for the university.
A later portion of the report dives deeply into the cost of too much choice. The introduction of the neighborhood system would dramatically change the range of choices students would have in creating their residential journey. Intuitively, one could view this reduction in choice as a bad thing, limiting the freedom of some so everyone has a form of continuity. But the authors of the ResX report question the value of choice. Feedback from students cited in the report show that the sheer amount of options available to students come with great costs. Many students felt they missed out on certain experiences, particularly the all-freshmen dorm experience, due to the variation of dorm options. The problems that come with the Draw are also deeply intertwined with the amount of variation. Though there are a multitude of options for many, many of the residence options are not desirable in the first place. The plan to eliminate the Draw in favor of a more structured system reflects the complexity and lower quality of the current diversity of options. By creating a structured residential system that provides continuity, the commission actually listened to what the majority of students said they desired.
This approach does come with one blind spot―the pockets of campus residential life that already have these elements. Tightly bonded communities, continuity over the four-year experience and a sense of belonging can be found in the types of housing that the report doesn’t know how to deal with, including FSL, ETH, and tight-knit row communities. The report distinctly says that it doesn’t know what to do with Greek life as a part of the neighborhood plan at all. Though there are systematic issues within Greek life that are being actively addressed on Stanford’s campus and across the country, these residential communities possess an element of community that the university needs to consider as they plan. The ability of Stanford students to create their own communities and organizations is a fundamental component of Stanford’s culture and has been since its inception as a university. This independence is an essential quality of all who join Stanford that bonds us across the generations, making it essential that this nature should be leveraged, not ignored, in order to ensure the success of the neighborhood system. The commission has recognized this to a degree, making it clear that students need to drive the formation of the identity of neighborhoods. But intentions can often be lost in the implementation. Dartmouth’s example is a clear warning sign to administrators on what these types of communities can become if they aren’t allowed to organically grow. So how can the Stanford administration look to organically grow these identities? How do they let the true spirit of the school mold this vision rather than detached commissions and panels?
This question requires administrators driving this process to step back and reflect on whether or not the neighborhoods themselves could ever organically create community. The report itself doesn’t evaluate any changes or transitory updates to the system. Immediate reforms over the next five years that could alleviate several issues with the current system are seemingly passed over. Instead, the report went for the loftiest vision possible, advocating for a solution and model for all future planning that is the most capital-intensive route possible. For all of the complaints of the current system, the task force was very reserved in its short term goals. Of course, this vision statement is one to guide development for the next 25 years. But even this plan will be severely curtailed due to Stanford’s abandonment of its GUP application. The path forward for the neighborhood vision is complex. But if there is a path forward, the next team that works on how this vision will be implemented needs to begin directing efforts to what will happen in the next five to 10 years. Reforms to the distribution of ethnic theme housing, more students wanting to be in all-freshmen housing, or the Draw itself can all happen today. Creating a housing system that promotes wellness and development of students requires more than a long term vision, it requires action today. As administration looks for the next step in creating the neighborhood system current students and alumni must remember this. The future of Stanford’s housing, and by extension Stanford itself, is in all of our hands. It is the responsibility of current and future students to ask themselves how we can make the communities and environment that we would like to leave for the generations to come.
Decker Paulmeier, a sophomore, is a staff writer for Stanford Politics. Kyle Wang, a sophomore, is a senior staff writer for Stanford Politics.