At town meetings and other opportunities to ask President Jackson and members of her cabinet questions, this issue has been raised. Often the response is that Barton Hall has shown us what we should be doing. An add-on to this is that the situation is being studied and we are considering working out a deal to privatize parts of campus housing.

While that might help us build and renovate up on the hill, perhaps there are other solutions and ideas that should be addressed.

First, what about the idea of having freshman through seniors in one building? Perhaps renovating the current halls to include some additional amenities to some of the floors would make it possible to have one floor for freshmen and other floors for upperclassmen. This might give the freshmen the chance to learn from upperclassmen in a non-academic setting.

This idea would create opportunities for a new intramural system to open up, in which dorms compete against each other for a prize. This new system might offer a greater sense of unity in the dorms and the prize for winning could be something that would benefit each member of the dorm. Competitions could even range outside of athletics to include robot-building contests or video game battles.

These dorms could be organized by major, by interest, or by simple random selection. Perhaps with the first year experience being looked at, a new tradition might begin in which certain dorms took on certain roles. Perhaps not all dorms would be identical communities.

This could lead to a certain feeling of pride in your dorm, and perhaps this would give each student more of a vested interest in his living quarters and in the school in general. If each student had such an interest, the dorms might be treated better, allowing for improvements to be made more frequently, as opposed to diverting money to simple maintenance.