It’s an experience that every incoming Wesleyan student can remember: finding out your freshmen room assignment online—you new home away from home for the upcoming year.  Many students claim that dorm stereotypes transcend years, leading freshmen to choose their dorms based on rumors atmospheres of years past. Yet according to the Office of Residential Life (ResLife), students are placed randomly in dorms and instead of falling into perennial patterns, new freshmen determine the new dorm stereotypes each fall.

Director of ResLife Fran Koerting urges incoming freshmen to be hesitant of believing the dorm stereotype hype.

“[The atmosphere] totally changes based on who ends up there,” she said.  “We’ve had some years where the Butterfields were very quiet and other years when it had a lot of, well, energy to it. Sometimes the physical layout of a dorm lends itself to a certain kind of climate. The Butterfields have shorter hallways, fewer people on halls, and fewer rooms, so they tend to be quieter. Based on the students who end up living there it could still end up with a very different atmosphere than what we could have guessed based on the physical structure.”

ResLife’s emphasis on random first year placement ensures that the specific culture of residence halls can end up being surprising from year to year. Koerting similarly denied the common misconception that athletes are deliberately placed in Fauver because of the proximity to the Freeman Athletic Center, or that they would be given any special preference based on their status as athletes.

“If [the student] says I’m on the football team and I really want to live in Clark, or I’m a swimmer and I really want to live in Fauver, we totally discount it,” Koerting said. “If anything, an athlete should be better equipped to walk from a distance.”

Though hall culture does evolve from year to year, one factor that remains is whether are freshmen-only or mixed year housing.  Students hold a variety of opinions on the advantages of one style of living over the other.  Jake Smith ’14, a resident of Fauver, is a strong proponent of freshmen-only housing.

“Everyone’s in the same grade and in the same situation, so everyone can—to a certain extent—comprehend everyone else’s problems,” he said.

However, according to Smith, the appeal of Fauver goes beyond a shared graduation date.

“There aren’t a whole lot of people in Fauver who are closed off. Everyone’s out and about,“ he said.  “I have yet to run into a person who’s always in their room studying or whatever.  People here just seem to desire interaction”

Still, not everyone who lived in freshmen-only housing believes that it is the ideal setup.  Melanie Bronfeld ’12 was originally placed in Clark during her freshmen year, but soon transferred to the Butterfield Dorms (the Butts).

“I felt like Clark lived up to its stereotype,” Bronfeld said. “It was full of freshmen who only wanted to hang out with other freshmen and party.”

Residents of West College (WestCo)—which like the Butts is also one of the mixed dorms on campus—are strong advocates of their living space. Programs such as weekly guidance meetings and the e-mail list-serve enforce the community-based living aspect of the dorm and lend a special kind of atmosphere to the residence.  Dema Paxton Fofang ’13, who lived in Nicolson in his freshmen year before moving to WestCo as a sophomore, articulated this feeling in particular.

“The Nics don’t really have an organized community,” Fofang said. “You’re lucky if the people on your hall get along, but it’s kind of just hit or miss, whereas with WestCo, if you want to be part of the community, there’s already a system set up to bring people together.”

There has been debate over whether feelings of division exist between dorms, particularly between Fauver, with its more mainstream connotation, and WestCo, with its reputation for diversity and eccentricity.  But when confronted with the question, people from both dorms admitted that they did not take the perceived division very seriously.

“You could have an infatuation with Legos and I’m sure they would take you [at WestCo] and accept you as one of their own,” Smith said.

Neither group truly felt any restrictions preventing them from mingling with people from the other dorm.  Smith asserted that his idea of WestCo people being somewhat “out-there” would never actually prevent him from making friends with a resident.

“I’ll have a class with a person from WestCo, I’ll end up eating at the same table with some kid from WestCo in Usdan, and in that case I’m going to have a conversation with them. I’m going to ask them where they’re from and I’m going to get to know them,” Smith said.  “I’m not just going to label them as a ‘WestCo kid’ and purposely avoid them.”

More often than not students branch out from just their first-year dorm friends over the course of their four years here.  Koerting said this factors into students’ decisions for sophomore-year housing and cited program housing a prime example.

“The program and what it offers is what’s most important to them, not that they’re living with five or six of their closest friends,” she said. “And I think that speaks volumes of Wesleyan students. They’re interested in meeting lots of different people, and trying different things. They’re not just interested in forming a close group of friends their first year and staying with them all four years. I think it’s good that our housing does foster that.”