Construction of the new dorms has raised questions as to their effects on the sense of community on campus. PHOTO/Nina Tarnawsky 08

In the 1990’s, Choate Rosemary Hall decided to downsize from about 1050 to 850 students, allowing all boarding students to live on lower campus. The move vacated many buildings on upper campus, which was originally built as Rosemary Hall’s campus and was later used to house boarding students. The buildings are now used by ITS and the Financial Office. In order to accommodate this shift some of the faculty houses on campus had to be switched into small dormitories, as the three large dormitories on upper campus were torn down. Additionally, because of financial restrictions, the percentage of day students within the student body had to increase from the consistent twenty percent where it had remained for several years. Choate administrators introduced these changes as temporary solutions, but somehow they became permanent. This year, the capital campaign has provided Choate with the financial stability to reverse these temporary solutions and continue with its original plans to construct two large dorms on what was then “lower campus,” eliminate the smallest of the single adviser houses, and return to the traditional number of day students.

Temporary Became Permanent

However, what that Choate administration could not foresee was how much Choate students would like these small houses and the sense of community this “temporary” solution would spread through campus. Despite the popularity of the idea of small, all senior houses, the current administration strongly agrees with the original plan. “It’s very important that students understand that we believe in single adviser houses, and we will still have single adviser houses… We’re not getting out of our commitment to small houses; we’re getting out of what was intended to be a very temporary phenomenon,” explains Mr. Stephen Farrell, the Assistant Headmaster and Dean of Faculty. “I’d remind you that prior to the announcement, we had certain small houses that no one wanted to live in… not all of these small houses are popular with the students.” Mr. John Ford, Dean of Students, notes, “As we plan for the opening of these two new forty-bed dorms, what we’re able to do is… get students into what we know will be better living quarters, get faculty into better living quarters , because this is about both students and faculty.”

An End to Inefficiency

The reasons for decommissioning these small senior houses, namely, Gables, Lewis, Richardson, Further and possibly Wheeler, are practical ones. “They don’t work well as dorms. They don’t have common rooms. They don’t have a sufficient number of people to give the kind of diversity that we like to talk about,” said Mr. Farrell. He continued that “It’s an incredibly inefficient use of your faculty, who are already fully overextended as faculty members in a boarding school.” In addition to being in disrepair, these dorms of five or six or seven students require the same number of faculty advisers as a dorm of fifteen students. “These dorms are hard to find advisers for, sometimes, because a single master house requires a lot more from a faculty member than a multi-adviser dorm,” explained Ms. Amy Salot, Director of Residential Life. “I want to move away from single master houses as much as we can, because its not the best situation for faculty members and in some cases its not the best situation for students.” Additionally, as Mr. Ford explains, “As we move kids into the new dorms another thing we’re going to be able to do is we’re going to be able to take some of the rooms on campus which we know are too small for doubles or triples and turn it into a single or double.”

Ms. Salot admitted that, “Very few of us love big dorms, but we needed that many beds.”

Community Renewed

The Choate Administration realizes that many students on campus have become melancholy over the loss of these dorms, and the community feeling they create on campus. Some administrators even agree. “In designing these two dormitories we were very aware that we were creating big dorms,” explained Ms. Salot. “We did every thing we could with the architects and the designers to create spaces in those dorms that would feel more cozy. We made sure that the common rooms were in the middle of the dorms and it’s not just one big hallway.” Although the school has no plans to directly replace the feeling of community some of these smaller dorms offered, there has been an effort to make the big new dorms feel more like the smaller houses. As Mr. Ford said, “Each [new dorm] will be built along a model of a ten student hallway with some doubles and some triples, connection to a common room and a connection to two faculty apartments. So if you take the two dorms together it will be a total of kind of eight individual units.” Salot further explained, “You’re going to feel like you’re in a smaller hallway than you would in Logan or Archbold If it’s done well we will have the feel of a small ten person dorm, while also having the advantage of big mug nights and big parties.”

An Opportunity to Change

The housing pattern for each of the new dorms has not been determined. According to Mr. Ford, “One of the things that building the new dorms is doing for us is allowing us to take a look our housing pattern all over campus.” Mr. Ford has assigned a committee headed by former form dean Benjamin Small to evaluate the housing patterns on campus. Mr. Small described the committee’s main focus, saying, “If we’re going to take off these small dorms, open up these two new big dorms, where do we put people?” Salot, who is also on the committee, explained that the committee encompasses “a wide range of very dedicated dorm advisers… in the process of looking at how we house all of our students.” The committee has not yet reported its findings and the recommendations will ultimately only constitute suggestions to Mr. Ford. Ford revealed, “I think its likely that we’re going to make some changes in the pattern in the way we house students, including, it’s possible, brace yourself, that we will no longer house freshman alone. There may be some significant changes down the road.” According to Mr. Ford, students will know about any changes made “sometime in the early part of next year.”