Hood Today

A new housing initiative known as Living-Learning Communities (LLCs) will be implemented in all of Hood College's residence halls beginning in the fall semester of 2010. The new program will allow students to create communities within each hall centered on a topic of their choice, further facilitating academic growth on campus.

The LLCs will be completely student run. Throughout the semester, they will set the goals that they will strive to achieve as the year progresses. Each LLC will have full authority over the objectives that they set for themselves, although a few parameters will be laid out by the administration. The community projects can be anything from accomplishing a personal pursuit to putting on a public demonstration. The communities, however, will have a faculty advisor of their choosing. The role of the group's mentor will be to help them work toward their aims throughout the year.

This concept for intellectually communal living arrangements was already implemented to a certain degree at the beginning of this fall semester. Several floors throughout the campus were designated as strictly First Year housing. The new plan, however, will take that idea a step further.

Residents of any class standing will be able to submit proposals for possible topics of these communities before room selection at the end of this semester. Application packets for proposing an idea for a community can be picked up at the Student Life Office beginning February 10th.

Ideally, the Residence Life Office would like to see five LLCs dispersed throughout each of the residence halls next year. The average size of each one is expected to be about ten students. The layout of each LLC will ideally be a grouping of five rooms sequestered at either end of any given floor of each hall; preferably, if they are available, triple rooms will be utilized in the community layout as well. In the LLC application, each group is able to rank order the residence halls that they would like to be placed in, and Residence Life will try to place them accordingly.

"The plan now is to cluster the students on a part of the floor, as to give plenty of space to other students not interested in joining the community," says Tiffany Favers, Area Coordinator of Meyran Hall.

"In terms of how big the program can become, it can become as big as the students want it to be," Favers said.

Some Hood residents are skeptical of the program's success in garnering interest among the resident population. The fear that Hood is too small a school for this type of program to be successful is a common sentiment shared among those students who were interviewed.

Brian Cathcart, a sophomore, said "It sounds like one of those ideas that would work well at a large university, but it's something that wouldn't work here."

Nicole Beller, also a sophomore, agreed. "Because this is a smaller school, it's going to be hard to gather enough people who want to take part in this," Beller said. "It's likely going to just be easier to keep the dorms as they were."

Beller also voiced concerns that the communities would be inherently ineffective. As a resident of the German House, she feels that educational communities such as the one she is currently part of, can only be effective when they are centered around something that can be integrated into everyday life.

"I love living in the German House. It has definitely helped me to improve my German," she states," but language is something that can easily be incorporated into everyday life, while other subjects don't quite work the same…. but maybe that's just me."

Regardless of how the program unfolds, Favers believes that the program's success will ultimately be up to the students who sign on to the program.

"The fact that these communities are student created and student led means that students will get what they want to get out of these communities," Favers stated.

Other changes in campus housing are going to be applied at the start of next semester, as well. The Spanish House will be relocated to the duplex next to the French House, at the corner of Fairview and 7th streets, and will be replaced by a new housing option for students enrolled in the Honors Program.

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