Group housing options relocate

For the past three years, students have had the option of living with a group of up to 30 other students in Palmer, Fletcher, Mumford, Meeker and Voter as part of a Superblock. However, next year, effective for room draw this spring, the Superblock model will be reformatted to accommodate smaller groups of students and be relocated to the Mods.

The 2010-2011 academic year saw a surge in Superblock applications, with 14 different groups applying, up from only three applications the year before. Due to this spike in interest, Residential Life has made the application process more selective for next year.

In preparing for next year, administrators in the Center for Campus Activities and Leadership (CCAL) have been reevaluating and reexamining the purpose of the Superblock system.

“We’re looking at where we’ve had success with this model and where we have not,” said Associate Dean of Students Doug Adams. “We have found that the Superblock model has been more successful in the smaller houses. Looking at Palmer, Fletcher, Munford, we haven’t seen as much cohesion or as much programming as we would have liked — the intent was to see a positive social outcome for the College. We define success as actively doing something, creating programs, and I think in the larger houses it has been harder to get that energy to fulfill that mission.”

As a result, next year students who wish to apply as a Superblock can do so in units of seven, and if accepted, will live in either Cousteau, Earhart, Norgay, Perry or Ride — the Mods. Residential Life coordinators hope that providing groups with a smaller living space will create more cohesion and productivity among their inhabitants, the original goal of Superblocks.

Additionally, the Mods have a tendency to be overlooked during the initial room draw in the spring, and then are put into summer draw, and residential coordinators are faced with the task of filling a seven-person space with students who don’t necessarily know each other or want to live together.

“We’ve historically had trouble filling the Mods. In a tight housing market like Middlebury where we house 98 percent of our students on campus, we can’t have the Mods going into summer draw when we’re trying to fill them with people who don’t know each other. So filling them as a common interest space is very helpful,” Adams said.

The application process for the 2011-2012 academic year will be more selective, not only because it is limited to a total of 35 students, but also because the application process will be more transparent and comprehensive. Students will first submit a written application explaining why a residential space will further their shared mission or cause, then be asked to demonstrate their intent to use the residential facilities to offer programming and social activities on a regular basis for the members of the block as well as the student body as a whole.

These presentations will be delivered to a committee that will be made up of four students from the Community Council and SGA, and four administrators. The inclusion of students on this committee is part of an effort to make the selection process more transparent and accessible to the student body.

Adams hopes these changes to the Superblock system will create a productive and positive addition to the residential life system and broaden social residential options beyond the established social houses.

“The most important element of a Superblock is that the mission and the purpose of those students will add to the campus community as a whole, and that having use of a shared space will add to their mission,” Residential Systems Coordinator Karin Hall-Kolts said. “The students, and the way they use their space, should enrich the College community somehow. And that’s the hope for the Mods next year — that they’ll be able to form a community down there, and be able to contribute to the whole College community.”

Superblock Policy