On the Campus A Blueprint to Make Residential Colleges ‘Feel Like Home’

April 2016

The recent PAW On the Campus squib “A Blueprint to make the Residential Colleges ‘Feel like Home’” was a headshaker. It led me to the University website to read the Report of the Task Force on the Residential College Model. My takeaway from its 25 pages (with elegant language, bullet points, and 3 appendices) is this: Having spent tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars creating the residential colleges in order to combat purported student isolation and improve the Princeton experience, the University seems to have admitted in a backhanded way that things haven’t changed much and that there is still much work to do. To quote from the report: “The Task Force on the Residential College Model embraced the University’s commitment to provide its students with a vibrant residential experience that advances learning, enables interaction and meaningful engagement, and supports both personal growth and community development. The task force further intends its recommendations to realize a vision in which the residential colleges truly feel like home to our students. They should provide a place where they feel welcome and accepted, and where they come together to learn from their diverse experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds, and challenge and inspire one another.”

It’s very sad. We have accepted students who (theoretically) are brilliant, inquisitive, intellectually curious, and open to diverse and interesting experiences, but someone apparently thinks they lack the capacity to create or obtain those experiences without additional University intervention. Instead, even though the previous Administration balkanized a relatively small University community into colleges, the message of the report is that 500-student colleges are still just too big for this to happen, the students are just not up to the task, and that the University must arrange, manage, and even order appropriate student interaction. Here’s a news flash – occasional uncertainty, isolation, discomfort and disorder are not necessarily bad things during the college years. As I tell Princeton applicants, “If you’re never unhappy during four years in college, then you are probably an insensitive lout or a sociopath.”

Here’s a cheaper alternative. Hire a motivational speaker with comedic chops (surely Jimmy Fallon or Seth Myers would leap at the chance, or perhaps we have at least one or two charismatic faculty) to deliver during the first week a message to all incoming students: “Hey, newbies! We let you into this beautiful place because you are brilliant, inquisitive, intellectually curious, have a lot to offer to others, and are open to learning from others! So go out and do it. Don’t just learn in classes. Make friends! Walk around the campus with your head up, and (gulp) even make eye contact! Ask questions over dinner! Invite people to your room for all-night arguments!”

If 21st century Princetonians can’t do this, then who can?

Lee L. Kaplan

WWS ‘73