New residential policies integrate first-year, upperclassmen housing

First-year students and upperclassmen are living in the same residence halls, and on the same floors.

The Office of Residence Life hopes to promote inclusion by integrating students of different class years into the same residence halls and creating new themed, interest-based communities.

The buildings that have undergone the new rearrangements include Richards, Smiley and Thornburg houses — all of which solely housed first-years and their Gryphons in the past.

Angie Rizzo, ’19, who is a Gryphon in Drinker this year, said she did not know what to expect when meeting her residents for the first time. She guessed that the sophomores would either be involved, mentor-like members of the hall or absent from the new living community.

“I was definitely worried about there being a divide between sophomores and freshmen,” Rizzo said.

While this may have been the case at first, Rizzo said she has been pleased with her hall’s dynamic. During the first official hall meeting, everyone participated and interacted with one another.

“When we were having a discussion about the Principles of Our Equitable Community, the sophomores directed the conversation and lead it, which I think encouraged a lot of freshmen to participate,” she said.

Ralph Shields, ’19, lives in Drinker, which is one of the integrated residence halls. As members of the lacrosse team, Shields and a few of his teammates decided to get rooms near each other in Drinker after receiving low housing lottery numbers last year.

Shields said the majority of his hall consists of athletes, including members of the lacrosse, baseball and wrestling teams, and he only knows one first-year student on his hall. He doesn’t see his living situation as being different from his first-year experience.

“I would be kind of intimidated being a freshman in a sophomore hall,” Shields said.

Generally, however, nobody thinks much of the new integrated living situation because it is deemed as normal, he said.

Courtney Stephens, the associate director of Residence Life, began her position right as the CORE report was released. She saw a lot of residential implications within the report and noticed right away that students were invested in their residential experiences.

Because a large portion of the freshmen class joins fraternities and sororities, students end up living in their respective Greek houses during their sophomore year. Stephens said the Office of Residence Life wanted to provide members of the student body with options aside from joining Greek life.

“There is a population of students who are not going Greek that need somewhere to live, especially with the two year ‘live-on’ requirement,” Stephens said. “So for us, that was something we were further exploring. We want to make sure that (Lehigh) is a home.”

This is where Live Lehigh comes from. In past years, the idea of Live Lehigh meant living in themed communities — housing options that connect students with similar passions. In past years, all first-year Live Lehigh communities were housed in Dravo.

These housing options, like CHOICE, STEM and Global Lehigh, are now called themed residential communities rather than Live Lehigh.

“We are now saying that no matter where you live on campus, you are ‘living Lehigh,’” Stephens said.

She said she feels it is important for everyone to feel like they are at home at Lehigh. With this new overarching title, she hopes to connect students throughout Lehigh’s campus.

Two new themed communities, Creative Vibes and Culinary House, have been added to Lehigh’s campus. These new themed communities have been driven and implemented by students in order to create options for anyone at Lehigh.

One of the goals of this new inclusive atmosphere is to provide upperclassmen with some leadership experience. Because their Gryphons oversee many students, it is beneficial for first-years to have an upperclassman who has experienced the novelty of the first year and knows what it’s like to live away from home for the first time.

“We’re finding that if (first-years and upperclassmen) live together, there is a really great relationship that kind of overlaps,” Stephens said. “So not only does it help the first-year, but it also helps the upperclassmen in the halls because now they have an opportunity to mentor.”