Today’s Washington University students enjoy memory foam mattresses in some dorms on the South 40 and eat fresh sushi for lunch at the Danforth University Center.

College life has changed markedly in the past few decades, according to Associate Dean of Students Jill Stratton, who has been at the University for 17 years.

Stratton said that for a long time, the University and other colleges focused many of their resources on graduate-level programs. This changed in the early 1990s, when the University and other schools began concentrating more on the undergraduate experience.

“A few places like Stanford and Washington University realized the heart and soul of our university are the undergraduates,” Stratton said.

Stratton, who teaches The Psychology of Young Adulthood at the University, said she believes that the quality of life enjoyed by students is essential to their success at the University. In her course, she discusses research that she said demonstrates a strong correlation between the happiness and fulfillment of students and their levels of academic success.

Sophomore Laura Zaim, who gives tours as part of the Student Activities Committee (SAC), said students today have a much different experience from their parents.

“[Today’s experience] has absolutely nothing to do with the college experience that our parents went through,” Zaim said. “I know when I give tours…parents are always remarking on…how there’s so much here that they didn’t have [and] can’t really imagine that they can [have here].”

Zaim said a large part of why the University offers some of its amenities to undergraduate students is today’s consumer culture.

“I think it’s become kind of like a consumer culture in that all these services are provided to us because we’re willing to pay for them. And [it helps] colleges to remain competitive,” Zaim said.

Stratton also emphasized the competitive edge offered by the University’s high quality of life.

“A lot of college campuses are paying more attention to the quality of life and students’ lives outside the classroom,” Stratton said. “But I think it’s one of our draws. I think we compare very well across the board.”

Residential facilities

Stratton said she has noticed a number of changes to the residential facilities on campus over the years, including 14 new buildings.

“The whole landscape has completely changed,” Stratton said.

Associate Director of Residential Life Joshua Walehwa has worked at the University since July 2003. In this time, he said he has seen the quality of residential facilities increase.

“We’ve added additional faculty families. We’ve strengthened our student engagement approach…We’ve improved safety and security and comfort levels,” he said. “Overall, we’ve just continued to try to be out there in front of other schools in the country in terms of trying to have a great residential life program.”

Additionally, the purpose behind residential facilities has altered, according to Stratton.

“Back in the day, [residential facilities were] just the concrete cinderblocks,” Stratton said. “Now, it’s where we live and learn. It’s about the quality of our whole lives.”

Dining facilities

Although Nadeem Siddiqui, resident district manager for Bon Appétit, is relatively new to the University, he said he has already seen dramatic changes in campus dining, including the construction of the new South 40 dining facility.

“Two years in a row, I will have the advantage of helping to redefine and adjust the dining program to help students have a better quality experience,” Siddiqui said.

The University hasn’t always had the high quality dining services that it currently has.

“We have all this healthy organic stuff that helps us live better lives, and back then it was like, ‘Here’s some cold pizza,’” sophomore Jessica Frank said.

Siddiqui said he believes changes in dining services are more recent.

“I think it has taken some years to refine [the campus dining situation]. I think the last several years it has been rated among the top living parts of the University,” Siddiqui said.

Siddiqui said he believes the University’s dining options are superior to those of comparable institutions, due in large part to the longer hours of service and the unique types of food provided. Siddiqui, who previously worked at Cornell and Stanford universities, claimed that when the South 40 facility is complete, the University’s dining system will be “one of the top programs in the nation.”

“We want a place that is comfortable and warm where students can come together with faculty and staff to learn,” he said. “Food is a magnet that brings people together.”

In his sophomore year, Lin moved to a six-person suite made up of students from four different ethnic backgrounds.

“It was really good because we would go out to all these different kinds of ethnic restaurants, and then we would have lots of discussion about politics and just general views on life,” Lin said. “It was actually a pretty richly rewarding experience.”

Lin is one of many University students to live with students of another race in residential housing. Over the summer, interracial roommates came into prominence in the media after several high-profile studies were published about them.

One study at Ohio State University found that having a roommate of another race can reduce students’ prejudices and broaden their friend circles.

Senior Heather Skanes, last year’s director of Black Anthology, said she agrees with this finding. Skanes, who is black, had a white roommate freshman year and said this led her to meet more white friends than she otherwise would have.

“I feel like at Wash. U., it’s really tempting to just be friends with people of your own culture,” Skanes said. “The fact that I had a roommate who was white led me to meet white friends that I otherwise wouldn’t have met.”

Skanes said her freshman roommate also connected with Skanes’ black friends, so the Ohio State study’s findings can go both ways.

The same study at Ohio State also found that black freshmen with high standardized test scores who room with white students earn better grades, even if their white roommates’ test scores are low. This was not true of white students or black students with low test scores. The study’s authors suggested that this effect might occur because having a white roommate could help black students adjust to studying at universities made up mostly of white students.

Skanes said her grades do correspond with these findings—she earned her highest GPA in her first semester freshman year—but that she does not feel her freshman roommate was a factor in her studying.

Skanes is a pre-med student, and her freshman roommate was in the art school. Skanes said she studied more when she lived in an all-black suite, mostly because she had a roommate at that time who would go to the library with her.

“I feel like I definitely did my best studying when I roomed with three black girls,” Skanes said. “It’s more about the person [you live with].”

Not all the findings on interracial roommates were positive. Another study at Indiana University found that three times as many randomly assigned interracial roommates had broken up by the end of their first semester, as compared to a control group of white roommates.

According to this study, white students’ prior negative attitudes about race were successful indicators of these breakups.

Jill Stratton, associate dean of students in the Office of Residential Life (ResLife), said that in her 17 years of working at the University, she can recall a few incidents of roommates separating due to racial problems. But she said such occurrences have tapered off in recent years.

“In the last five years, I’ve not been aware of a specific incident that dealt with roommates moving out or changing roommates because of racial problems,” Stratton said.

Stratton cites the University’s commitment to diversity and the visibility of this to prospective students as a reason the University experiences fewer racial problems in housing than other universities.
As for interracial roommates who stay together, Associate Director of Residential Life Josh Walehwa said these students should “take full advantage” of their experiences.

Walehwa, who advises the diversity committee in ResLife, said he feels that students stand to benefit from having their pre-existing attitudes about race challenged by their roommates.
“I believe that we benefit from people who might have different ideologies, backgrounds, beliefs,” Walehwa said. “That’s what college really is all about.”