Freshman dorms are a place for first-year students to come together and bond. Well, except in Eliot House, where freshmen can just go upstairs and find begrudged sophomores, bitter about their housing. Fortunately, ResLife will soon remedy this situation. Except for the ground floor of Phase 4B, all of the freshman dorms will be freshmen only. This is definitely a step in the right direction for Residential Life, since freshman-only floors make it far easier to promote floor unity.
One pitfall of Wash U’s rise in enrollment is this housing problem. ResLife has been faced with the thankless task of trying to accommodate the wishes of upperclassmen who want to stay on the South 40, while fitting nearly every single freshman on the 40 as well. Since only so many freshmen can fit in each dorm, the University is forced to have dorms that are mixed with freshmen and upperclassmen. This is not an ideal situation, but it is also very difficult to avoid.
Residential Life is working hard to get around this problem, though, by building new dorms while phasing out the old dorms, starting with Koenig next year. Whether or not they should just renovate Koenig instead of tearing it down is another issue altogether. But at least ResLife is trying to maintain all-freshmen dorms.
“Typically, the University will house freshmen only with other freshmen,” Associate Director of Residential Life Rob Wild explained. “As we build new buildings on the South 40, this is the model we are using. So in a Residential College (like Brookings, Crow and WGE), there will always be a freshman building paired with an upperclass building.” This is the appropriate path for Residential Life to follow.
Abiding by this model, Eliot House will become an upperclassmen-only dorm next year. Phase 4B, which is replacing Koenig, will unfortunately not be freshmen only, though. According to Wild, the ground floor of Phase 4B will be upperclassmen only, while freshman alone will occupy the three floors above it. This is not the best possible scenario, but it is a good start, and may not be able to be averted.
Freshmen-only floors will also help freshmen form their own opinions about Residential Life, instead of hearing how bad it is from an upperclassman that got stuck in a mixed dorm against their wishes.