When Houses Are
More Than Homes
Residential colleges old and new proser
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The average dormitory denizen does not
respond to a 4 a.m. fire drill on a chill
September morning by bursting into
folk song, as some residents of Carmichael
Hall at the University of North Carolina
did last fall. In Spanish. Senior Bob White
strummed his guitar during the obligatory
wait outside (it was a false alarm), and his
floormates chimed in with the lyrics.
But then, Carmichael Hall is no ordinary
place. A wing on the second floor is now
reserved for Spanish and French majors,
along with their tutor, as part of a Chapel
Hill experiment in building "mini-residen-
tial colleges." German and health-sciences
majors live and learn together in other
sections of Carmichael, and another area is
set aside for students from diverse ethnic
backgrounds, almost like a small United
Nations.
The notion of a community of scholars
that lives and studies together is as old as
ancient Greece, and it has long thrived in
the independent colleges of Oxford and
Cambridge. In the Oxbridge model, the col-
leges are independent and self-governing;
they control their own endowment and
command fierce loyalty from students and
dons. This leaves to the university the func-
tions of giving courses of lectures and ex-
aminations for the degrees, which only the
university awards. Residential colleges in
the United States are not similarly auton-
omous, but the system in different forms
flourishes at universities from the oldest,
such as Harvard and Yale, to the newest,
such as the University of Cali-
fornia, Santa Cruz; from such
large state universities as the
University of Michigan, to
small liberal-arts colleges, such
as Ohio's College of Wooster.
Institutions are trying all
kinds of variations of resi-
dential colleges-nearly self-
contained colleges at Santa
Cruz, dormitory floors at Chap-
el Hill. One goal is to counteract
the perceived anonymity of Dorm mas
mass, high-tech student life.
Another is simply to improve learning.
This undefined quality allows many insti-
tutions to claim to offer versions of the
residential college, but most of them func-
tion chiefly as housing and housekeeping
mechanisms of the institution. They lack
the critical element: the faculty masters or
tutors or fellows who live with the students
in what can be considered a never-ending'
educational process.
Evening songfests: In the last three years
the University of Miami has moved 60 per-
cent of the 3,900 students who live on cam-
pus to residential colleges. Ross Murfin, a
professor of English who last spring com-
pleted his official three-year term as a fac-
ulty master, lived with 400 students in
Hecht Residential College. He and his wife,
Pamela, frequently invited their student
neighbors to evening seminars with visit-
ing experts in all manner of subjects or for
songfests around their ebony grand piano.
CHASCANCELLARE
er: Miami's Biggers and family
Associate Master Thompson Biggers arid
his wife were similarly hospitable, hosting
a Spanish dinner for students, who cooked
paella, fried yucca and other ethnic dishes.
Murfin believes the goals of the program
should be relatively modest: "If your goal
is to resurrect the golden age," says
Murfin, "with famous scholars and think-
ers with hundreds of students sitting at
their feet every week, you're going to be
disappointed."
Still, the concept is considered so success-
ful at Northwestern that the university
has turned 10 of its 26 housing units into
residential colleges since 1970. They vary
in size from 37 to 300 students. All are
coed, except for the women's studies
house, and most have an academic theme.
The 107 students in the communications
residential college, for instance, live in
suites of six or seven rooms that surround a
common living area. The house has seven
1
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ALLEN DEAN STEELE STEVE LEONARD
No ordinary places: Vocalizing in Spanish at North Carolina, editing tape in Northwestern's communications hall
18 NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS
OCTOBER 1987