Residential colleges are like psychological counseling services. Or tutoring services, for that matter. Most people should take advantage of them more often, and those who never do are usually adamant that they never needed those services to begin with. If there’s one thing that Princeton students are insecure about, it’s being perceived as insecure. Everyone strives to embody the ideal of someone who “has it together” and never needs help succeeding academically or socially.
But even if you don’t use them, you’re probably glad that counseling and tutoring services exist at Princeton. Openly, you’re glad that those services are there for those who need them, and, privately, you’re glad that they’re there in case you need them. When you consider nightmare scenarios like failing a course or losing a family member, it’s reassuring to know that Princeton’s student services provide you with a safety net.
One of the biggest problems with Princeton is that there’s no safety net for bad outcomes in the upperclass social world. The residential colleges are supposed to provide a viable alternative to the eating clubs and co-ops, but I think their limitations doom them to failure. Let me explain.
Social independence is an even touchier subject than academic or emotional independence. Most people think they are perfectly capable of making their own friends and shaping their own social lives without help from the University. In the most obvious sense, those people are right. But in a more important sense, I think they may be wrong. What they don’t want to admit is that no one’s social life is entirely in his or her control. Random chance and University-generated social conditions play a much bigger role in shaping our friendships and interactions than we would like to admit.
If this isn’t obvious, imagine life without any of the University’s social programs. As a freshman, you would be assigned to a dorm unaffiliated with a residential college, and you would choose new dorms by lottery every year after that. You’d be free to live anywhere on campus with your closest friends. No friends from Outdoor Action or Community Action and no familiar faces from the residential colleges or freshman week would interfere with your unlimited dorm options. Take a moment to imagine living this way for four years, and you may conclude that the quality of your social life is not completely in your hands.
Here’s the punchline: What I just described doesn’t seem so different from the lives of many upperclassmen.
You saw it coming even as a freshman: The residential college you were supposed to feel loyal to is going to cast you out after two years. Following the trend, you’ll probably join a co-op or an eating club, and soon all those familiar faces from your residential college will become distant memories. You’ll have to make a new, less-diverse network of acquaintances. Of course, you’ll stay in touch with your closest friends even if they don’t make the same dining choice as you, but everyone else in your residential college will go their separate ways. A lot of them seemed like cool people who you would've liked to know better, but now they live and eat away from you, and it would be awkward to approach them out of nowhere.
Maybe none of that bothers you. For sure, there’s nothing wrong with people wanting to room and eat together because they have things in common. But I think there may be something unhealthy about spending all your time with people who share your background and your preferences. A little variety makes most things richer and more interesting, and I don’t think social life is an exception. Unfortunately, the combined effect of eating clubs, co-ops and freedom in upperclass housing makes it all too easy for that variety to disappear after sophomore year.
So how could we bring that variety back? Here’s one solution: Reduce the freedom of upperclass housing. In other words, implement four-year mandatory residential colleges — serving upperclassmen not just as advising entities but as physical and social realities.
This doesn't mean shutting down the eating clubs — or even competing with them. All it means is that each freshman would be randomly assigned to a dorm cluster that they would call home for the next four years. Each cluster would share an architectural style, a courtyard and 300–500 students of all ages. No new construction would be needed, and eating options would be unchanged. You would have a meal plan for your first two years and eat in the dining halls. As an upperclassman, you would eat wherever you want.
What would this accomplish? For one, continuity. You would have the same neighbors all four years. By graduation, you would know more of your residential collegians than two years would have allowed. You would know a random sample of Princetonians well enough to appreciate how diverse they are. And you would no longer feel like your eating club or co-op is your only source of social continuity — a social island in a roiling sea of new faces and new dorms.
In short, you would have a safety net.
It’s usually taken for granted that people are happier when they have more choices. But I think this may be a case where restricting one relatively unimportant choice can dramatically improve campus life. Once we acknowledge that neither students nor the University has it together, we may be ready to sacrifice a little choice for a lot of benefits.
Jason Kaplan is a sophomore from Easton, Conn. He can be reached at jdk@princeton.edu.
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