There are a lot of ways to work for the man at Franklin & Marshall. How did you know that RPO was the one? Do you love RPO?

Work for the man ...

Does RPO love you?
I never really thought of it as working for the man - it was really working for the woman.
Collette [Shaw, former head of RPO] was a very visionary leader. At the end of my freshman year, I knew I wanted to do cool things, make a difference, change the world. I made the decision that since I love this school so much, it was important that I help other people to do the same. One way to do that was to work for Residential Programs. I started with RPO at the beginning of my sophomore year, and RA training that year really changed my life. It was an amazing experience. It opened up all kinds of things for me, let me see things I hadn’t thought about before.
It exposed me to issues of diversity, it exposed me to behavioral issues, it taught me skills, it helped me look at the college community from a bigger picture point of view and I think you’ll find that in general I’m a pretty big picture person, so I loved that stuff. I want to do good things, want to change people’s lives - not in the creepy manipulative way but in the good, inspirational way.

Have you ever been drunk?
Yes, but I believe that alcohol is a normal part of adult living ... so as an adult, being 21, partaking of alcohol is a normal thing. So with the House System we’re going to try to organize some alcohol events. Now this isn’t like keggers on the roof; this is like wine tasting or ... I don’t know - dinner with beer, but for adults.

What is your wholly subjective, “what does Colin Presby think” opinion of the House System? Do you think it is a step in the right direction for F&M?
Yes, if done well.

Couldn’t you say that for any new system of infrastructure that’s imposed?
I think the House System has a lot of potential, but I think it needs guidance - especially in transition. I think it can be good. Do I think the House System is a step in the right direction? That’s a really tough question, because there are a lot of ways in which I see this transition as a step back. This is something that I’ve talked to the Prefects [for the uninitiated, Prefects are the administration, Dons are the faculty that are involved in each House] and the other Head HAs about. I think that our upper level administration has a history of saying one thing that’s great, and then wiping things away that supported it. Look at the House System tenets, one of which is “a new social landscape.” It means they want to increase lounge space, put seminar rooms into residence halls and do all kinds of cool stuff like that. Well great, we say we want that, and then the year before the House System comes in we get rid of the biggest lounge on campus and make it into a Quizno’s. I feel like the administration is doing a little bit of that with the House System. We’re saying one thing, and then shooting ourselves in the foot. We say we want to make all these good changes so we get rid of the structure that we had in place that was working toward those very same goals. So if you look at the goals of the House System and the goals of Residential Programs last year, they were largely the same. But we, as of the middle of the summer, wiped away all of Residential Programs. We had just crashed down a big structure that did a lot of good things, and now we’re trying to build another structure that does the same good things without using any pieces from the first one.

What do you think of the rule that says students can’t change Houses, effectively limiting the ability to room with whomever you like?
When we looked at other schools that have House Systems, almost all of them have that kind of rule in place.

There better be a reason beyond that ...
Oh, there is. But the one exception talking to people there is they kind of regret it because there’s no real House identity. One of the biggest problems with the House System is that we’re looking at so many things five years out, but the students have to live with it today.

What happens to the students who spend four years here during the interim five year period?
That’s the problem, but five years out, with this no changing House rule, you develop a strong sense of House and the people you know - the upperclassmen you know and hang out with a lot are primarily your Housemates. So when it comes time to choose rooms, you either want a single or want to live with a Housemate.

You said what the reason for that rule is to force a sense of House identity. But shouldn’t the Houses be made up of people who choose to live in that House and already share an identity?
Yeah, in a way, but no. Of the twelve remaining members of my freshman hall, I still regularly talk to about eight. Since the school year started, I’ve talked to all of them, on a non-trivial level. We were very different people, but we still managed to get along. I think that’s what they’re looking at in the House. We’re looking for groups with specific identities within the House. We’re hoping that within each House, we get enough diversity that every single House has every necessary sub-group. We’re not going to have the Jock House, the Arts House. We’re trying to have all of that in one House; we’re trying to have balanced Houses. With that, we can bring in balanced competition, for example in the intra-mural system.

What, if any, are the incentives for students living off-campus to engage in the House System?
Getting this current group of off-campus students engaged is very important, and I think it will be very hard. Right now what the House System needs more than anything is experience and guidance, and what it doesn’t have is experience and guidance. If you look at MBT House’s committees, our committees who are writing the constitutions are almost all freshman, a handful of sophomores, and one or two juniors and seniors who are probably HAs, and that’s tough, because the people who know what they’re talking about are the juniors and seniors, but the people who have to live with it are the freshmen and sophomores.

Alright, that’s the advantage to the House System, but what are the advantages for off-campus students to engage?
The high-minded idea is that you should want to contribute to the future of your school.

And realizing that this is reality ...
It is?

Yeah.
The College, the upper-level administration, glowing eyes or not, have taken this risk and said, “We’re going to give each House fifteen-thousand dollars, and we’re going to have the students decide how it’s spent.”