Members of the Undergraduate Residential Life Committee (URLC) hosted a community forum last night to gather student feedback about recommendations made last spring in an external review of Residential Life (ResLife).

The URLC will meet Monday to discuss the recommendations and the opinions voiced during the forum.

The committee has hosted three community forums so far to get feedback from ResLife student staff, the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), and the student body. The third forum took place last night and was open to all students. About 12 students attended.

Among the recommendations included in the review is the need to assess affinity program housing for segregating students, eliminate the Head Resident (HR) position, make residential advisors (RAs) enforce the University alcohol policy more strictly and integrate academics with residential life.

The committee’s opinions of the recommendations will be submitted to the Student Life Committee (SLC), which will use them as a guide in constructing a report on its opinions of the recommendations, which will be given to President Doug Bennet. He will consider the SLC’s report in making his decisions about the review’s recommended changes in ResLife policy.

The URLC and SLC are policy committees comprised of both students and administrators.

“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get feedback. We’re trying to hear all the different arguments on all the different sides with respect to all these recommendations and observations,” said Dean of Student Services Mike Whaley, who sits on the URLC.

WSA Student Activities Chair Becca Solow ’04, who chairs the URLC and co-chairs the SLC with Dean of the College Peter Patton, said that no timeline for the committee reports has been set, but expects the SLC report to be ready by the end of the semester. She said that this is because there may be a need to get more student feedback.

“It’s going to depend on how controversial this is,” she said.

During last night’s forum, students voiced their opposition to several of the recommendations, particularly to defend program housing and insist that RAs counsel residents rather than punish them for alcohol violations.

Solow said she does not expect the program house issue to be particularly controversial within the URLC because she said she knows that many committee members strongly support program housing.

Whaley said, “I happen to believe we have a pretty strong program housing system.”

WSA Finance and Facilities Committee members Nathan Victoria ’05 and Ali Gomer ’05, who are both on the URLC, said that they support keeping program housing.

“I don’t think that the URLC will find that the houses are really self-segregating,” said Gomer.

Solow said she expected the recommendations to eliminate HRs and change the role of RAs to be more controversial within the URLC.

Victoria, who is an HR in WestCo, said he was against eliminating HRs because he believed RAs would be more likely discuss a problem with another student than an administrator. He added that students can be more accessible as well.

Victoria said that the recommendations about program houses, HRs and RAs show that the reviewers did not have a good understanding of the University.

“Because Wesleyan has such a unique residential life experience, only having two days to review the experience made their findings a little skewed,” he said.

Gomer, who is an RA in Nicholson, said that she disagreed with making RAs more enforcing, but said she would support creating a more uniform approach to how RAs deal with alcohol violations.

Another recommendation commented that students think they have a greater role in the decision-making process than they actually have.

When the issue was brought up in last night’s meeting, Solow said “My personal opinion is that these reviewers come from schools where students are not so passionate about their campus and about what happens on campus.” She added that another part of the reason for that recommendation was that the reviewers came in the midst of the debate over whether freshmen would be allowed to live in Malcolm X House next year.

Whaley said he believed that student opinion is important and has been the point of recent efforts of URLC in organizing the community forums.

“I think that they identified that sometimes Residential Life bears the brunt of announcing institutional decisions,” said Whaley.

“We need to find effective ways for student voices to be heard, and hopefully the way that we’re kind of collecting feedback about these recommendations is a model for that,” he said.

Another major issue in the report was the recommendation to incorporate an academic life into the residences. Whaley suggested that some faculty members could live with students like at Vassar.

Gomer said she was not so sure how that would work logistically and added that there is an argument about why academics and residential life should be separated.

Solow said that the URLC has been discussing having professors give lectures about non-academic subjects in order to create relationships between students and faculty members out of class.

ResLife currently requires that RAs have one hall program that involves a faculty member.

Victoria said he favored the recommendation and suggested that deans and administrators should spend time in the dorms talking informally with students. He said he was mixed about whether professors should live with students.

One student at last night’s forum spoke out against the idea.

“I don’t think moving adult educators into the dorm is such a good idea,” he said.

The review is part of a two-year process to reexamine residential life on campus which began when Director of ResLife, Jeff Ederer, composed an internal review of the office.

The recent external review was requested by Ederer and Whaley.

“We wanted to establish the next strategic plan for the office,” Whaley said.

The reviewers read University advertising and policy materials provided to them by Ederer and spent two days at the University last April, meeting with ResLife staff, students and administrators.

New York University Executive Director of Housing and Residential Life Tom Ellett and Davidson College Associate Director of Resident Life Leslie Urban conducted the review. They were each trained by the Association of College and University Housing Officers International to review residential life policies.

According to Whaley, a staff member from Wellesley was supposed to conduct the review but was unavailable, so Urban was used instead.

Solow and Elaine Garven ’05, house manager for Eclectic and a URLC member, facilitated last night’s forum, which much of the ResLife administrative staff and Whaley attended.

After the forum, Ederer said, “I would have loved to have seen more people, but I think the people who came had good comments. I think it’s one important step in a long process of determining what steps to take.”

Whaley said that this forum raised many of the same issues raised in the first two.

After its meeting this Monday, the URLC will decide whether to host future community forums.