PrincetonUniversity
 

Report of the Four-Year College Program Planning Committee
August 20, 2002

  B. Basic Assumptions

The Committee’s recommendations are predicated on these two basic assumptions:

• There will be close interaction between the four-year college and the two-year college within each two-college pair.
• While the numbers of juniors and seniors resident in four-year colleges will be small relative to the total population of juniors and seniors, all juniors and seniors will have a continuing association with residential colleges.

1. Interaction between paired colleges

The Committee believes that there must be thorough coordination within each pair of a four-year and a two-year college. Such coordination would apply to intellectual and cultural programming, athletic events, trips, parties, invitations to visitors, use of specialized facilities, and so on. Careful coordination is important for several reasons:

• Coordination will give every student a relationship to a four-year college, whether or not s/he actually lives in it. This relationship will expand the beneficial influences of the four-year colleges.
• To the extent that the four-year colleges may have superior facilities, fairness requires allowing all students access to them.
• By exposing more freshmen and sophomores to the four-year colleges, we will expand the pool of students who want to live there when they are juniors and seniors.

2. College affiliations for nonresident juniors and seniors

Providing additional residential and social options for upperclass students is clearly an important goal of the new college system. Just as important, however, is providing the broad educational benefits of the residential colleges to as many juniors and seniors as possible.

The Committee envisions a future in which the norms for undergraduate residential and social life at Princeton encompass a variety of arrangements, including two-year colleges, four-year colleges, Prospect Street, and independent living in such facilities as Spelman and co-ops. We wish there to be multiple norms that are not mutually exclusive. In creating the new college system, we aim to ensure that upperclass students who live and socialize in a residential college will feel that they fully belong at Princeton as part of an accepted residential and social mainstream.

But if the four-year colleges simply provide a residential option for three hundred juniors and seniors, we will fall short of our aspirations for the broad educational benefits that the new college system should afford. The Committee believes strongly that the development of four-year colleges provides the opportunity to enhance residential and social life for all Princeton students. To that end, we propose that all juniors and seniors remain affiliated with the colleges they entered as freshmen, except for those students who move after the sophomore year from a two-year to a four-year college, who will join their new college.

We deliberately describe the relationship in terms of affiliation rather than membership. While the difference may appear semantic, some people view membership to entail certain requirements, or to preclude membership in other groups or clubs. With affiliation, the relationship need not be exclusive, and its extent is largely a matter for individual choice. We believe that affiliation invites community in ways beyond what simple residence may produce. We imagine a world in which everyone on campus “belongs” to a college, no matter where he or she may live. One comes back to one’s college naturally as a place to renew old friendships and forge new ones, to participate in certain activities and to find particular services. The colleges should be magnets that draw students back, places that complement, not compete with, other places where they may eat and live.

Increasing the number of upperclass students who have reason to participate in the life of the colleges will yield benefits for all students. Freshmen and sophomores will benefit from increased exposure to upperclass students, who exemplify the intellectual engagement and exercise of leadership to which younger students may aspire. The continuing affiliation of nonresident juniors and seniors with their colleges of origin will make it easier to attract juniors and seniors to live in the four-year colleges. Also, the presence in the colleges of more upperclass students will help to relieve the persistent tension in the situation of resident advisers (RAs) and minority affairs advisers (MAAs), who feel torn between the attractions of their positions and the fact that geographical and social separation currently prevents them from interacting regularly with members of their class.

To the extent that four-year colleges will have facilities and offer services that are not available in the two-year colleges, we propose that these facilities and services be equally available to students living in or affiliated with the partner college.

Turning to specifics, we imagine that continuing affiliation could have several aspects:

1. A continuing relationship with deans and directors of studies: It makes sense for upperclass students to maintain the often close relationships that they have established with the deans and directors of studies of their residential colleges. As we shall explain in more detail, we see a strong argument for decentralizing into the colleges responsibility for the academic advising and personal support now provided in deans’ offices in West College.
2. Meals: Enabling every upperclass student to eat one or two meals per week in the college would greatly facilitate continuing affiliation and enhance interaction among the classes. Having a late-meal option is particularly important in this context. If one or more of the colleges offered a late-meal option on weekdays, it would bring upperclass students back more frequently. Late-meal options would also be likely to draw significant numbers of athletes back into the colleges.
3. Programs and facilities: Nonresident juniors and seniors should be invited to participate in at least some of the college’s programs and activities and should be given access, where feasible and appropriate, to special college facilities.
4. Intramurals: Making upperclass students eligible to play intramurals for their college would foster friendships within and across class years and facilitate continued allegiance to the college. Implementing this change should not preclude the eating clubs from also fielding their own teams.
5. Orientation: The best time to establish routines is at the beginning of the year, when students decide on their activities and have more time to socialize and explore. Giving upperclass affiliates a greater role in the orientation process (e.g., through interclass social activities and competitions within each college) would both create more interaction among the classes and make upperclass students more inclined to visit the colleges throughout the year.
6. Representation on the college council: A seat on the college council might be designated for an upperclass affiliate.
7. Special events for juniors and seniors: The colleges may wish to organize special events, like “alumni” dinners or receptions, for both resident and affiliated juniors and seniors. The colleges might organize celebrations at Commencement -- a Commencement lunch, for example, or a Class Day brunch -- for resident and affiliated graduating seniors and their families. One could imagine transferring the distribution of diplomas from Cannon Green to the colleges, with a brief ceremony after the Commencement lunch in which the college master hands each new graduate his or her diploma.

The Committee proposes that the University’s fee structure be rethought in order to facilitate the participation of nonresident juniors and seniors in the life of their original colleges. The objective would be to fold into tuition a dollar amount sufficient to cover the costs of residential college affiliation. The college fee, paid only by those students who live in a residential college, would then be set at a reduced level. These two charges would generate funds sufficient both to support programs, activities, and facilities for resident students from all four classes, and to allow nonresident juniors and seniors to take part in a limited range of college activities (e.g., trips, parties, receptions, one or two meals a week) without taxing them for each event in which they participate.

In sum, we believe that continued college affiliation would have several desirable consequences. It would increase the impact of the beneficial effects presumed to inhere in the new college system. It would help to overcome the problem of critical mass that might otherwise threaten the success of four-year colleges. (In the absence of affiliation, the number of upperclass students in residence might otherwise be too few to significantly affect the life of the colleges.) Continuing affiliation would normalize the social choice of maintaining strong ties to one’s college. It would lead to a more integrated undergraduate experience for every student, and it would foster a more cohesive campus community. The assumption of continuing affiliation undergirds many of the recommendations that follow.