When students were moving into residence halls last week, they might have recognized more of their new neighbors.
Students living in University residence halls this year are divided into class-based buildings under a new initiative to house students from the same year together. The program aims to create living environments catered to individual grade levels, said Seth Weinshel, director of housing and occupancy management.
“The class you are admitted with is the class you live with,” Weinshel said.
Rising fourth-year students were able to select from Ivory Tower, 1959 E St., The Aston and Guthridge Hall, while rising third-year students were able to choose from City Hall, New Hall, International House, Francis Scott Key Hall and The Dakota.
Posted on the GW Housing Programs’ Web site are grade-specific curricula the University encourages residents to integrate into their class-based housing experiences.
The suggested curriculum for freshmen focuses on developing skills related to conflict resolution, self-assessment and academic persistence. The sophomore curriculum aims to help students explore professional and personal self-identity, while the upperclassman curriculum urges students to begin defining themselves.
According to Weinshel, about 80 percent of the residents in a dorm designated for a certain class are in that class. The remaining 20 percent is comprised mostly of students pulled into the dorm by a roommate in a higher grade level.
“Eighty percent is a target number,” Weinshel said. “We want students to be able to live with whomever they feel the most comfortable within our guidelines, and for the most part, things tend to work out.”
D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment regulations require the University to house all underclassmen within the campus’ boundaries. Under this BZA regulation, dorms including New Hall, City Hall, The Aston and 1959 E St. are located off-campus and are not available to freshmen and sophomores.
In the past, students selected housing assignments based on their number of earned credits. This gave underclassmen that entered GW with college credits the opportunity to select from the same dorms available to upperclassmen.
This also meant that students who entered the University with college credits were not able to select housing with friends in their grade level who had not entered with college credits.
“Last year we had 350 freshmen who were being considered juniors in the housing selection process based on credit hours tell us they were not able to select housing with their classmates,” Weinshel said.
Weinshel added that he hopes the new class-based system will give students a clear picture of what to expect from University housing if they continue living in residence halls as upperclassmen.
“We wanted to set up real expectations for students,” Weinshel said. “Because the amenities available in the University’s residential properties differ, having a class-based dorm policy allows students to work their way up through the system and eventually into the nicest dorms.”
GW Housing Programs has received “some pretty good feedback” about the new class-based dorm system, Weinshel said. He added that all assignable beds are filled and that fthere are currently no students on a waitlist to receive University housing.
Not all students are excited about the initiative. Junior Sindy Levitt said she is not in favor of the University’s attempts to separate halls by class.
“I think part of the experience of college is meshing with people older and younger than you,” Levitt said. “There is so much to learn from people around you that I think this idea would be limiting the experience of college.”
-Jessica Calefati contributed to this report.
