In response to Akhil Joondeph’s article Colorful but Cold Community, published in the September 15, 2023 issue.

From your friend’s pregame at Wesleyan’s Christian program house to your classmate from “right outside Boston” living in International House, it’s no secret Wesleyan’s program housing doesn’t always live up to its community potential.

Confronted with this reality, Joondeph concluded last week that to better serve student interests, Wesleyan should do away with “houses with themes that residents could not care less about” and convert former program houses to non-thematic sophomore or junior residences. Embedded in Joondeph’s conclusion is an understanding that houses for identity groups, whose missions help support marginalized communities, might be protected from such a change.

I read Joondeph’s argument as defeatist, and I argue his proposed change to residential life would remove any future potential for the physical memory and present culture of the vibrant, long lasting communities found in program housing.

At the end of the day, program houses aren’t just about the people living there, they’re about the communal gathering place the house creates.

I live in Outhouse, likely one of Wesleyan’s most lively program houses. This life, however, comes not just from residents’ shared joy in spending time outside, but from the out-of-house community that gathers at the residence for club meetings every Sunday, or various trips and events throughout the week.

One of my former editors once remarked that a community can be defined as a group with a shared recollection of the past. Walk into the library of the Outhouse, or the “pork room” of the Bayit, and you feel as if you are someplace others have been before. The spunk and physical evidence of intergenerational knowledge in these houses (be it, in the Outhouse, wilderness first aid handbooks or the club’s famous “butt pics” from over the decades) are vitally important to cultivating student memory and community.

Just this Sunday afternoon, a Wesleyan graduate and former Outing Club president stopped by the house to cherish memories. Though the house had changed slightly (notably, Wesleyan installed a flat screen TV on top of her mural), many traditions live on, including a scroll she created, listing everyone who has ever lived in the house, dating back to its inception as Outing Club residence in 1983.

There is history in these walls—let’s work to preserve it.

Importantly, program houses, unlike the sterile blank canvas of regular upperclassmen housing, offer some sort of glimpse at a quasi off-campus feel to life, where evidence of student community can live on for years.

Instead of privatizing housing and closing it off from out-of-house communities, let’s reinvest in the clubs surrounding these (what should be considered public) houses and continue to encourage people to view program houses not as an opportunity for a single with hardwood floors, but as a place for many to gather and celebrate shared knowledge.

We can make program housing better, and Wesleyan would be diminished without it.

Thank you for your consideration,
Thomas Lyons