When McCormick freshman Ryan Cook opened his housing contract over the summer and found out he was living in PARC, he was surprised. The Public Affairs Residential College was nowhere on his list of five preferred dorms. He went on Facebook and found a group of people in the same situation. “None of the people wanted to be here,” he says. “It’s kind of just a random bunch of people. A couple people wanted to be in Allison, a couple people wanted to be in Bobb, and they all just got mixed up here.”
This year, a larger freshman class and a limited number of dorm rooms resulted in fewer students getting their first choices in housing. Many of them didn’t get placed in any residence on their lists. Part of the reason was that a large number of students asked to live in the same six residences: Allison, Bobb, McCulloch, Elder, 1835 Hinman and Willard. “You found yourself with probably 200 to 250 students who were in a position of not being assigned to one of their choices,” says Mark D’Arienzo, associate director of university housing.
And when students are not placed anywhere on their list, it doesn’t just disappoint more people. A curious thing starts to happen: the identities of the residence halls change; dorms begin to lose their reputations. Dorms with a distinct character start to see a change. And while where you lived sometimes used to say something about you, it doesn’t anymore.
This year, 12 freshmen were assigned to live in Phi Mu Alpha, the music fraternity at 626 Emerson Street. Since it’s a fraternity house, it was not even an option when freshmen made up their housing preference lists. The freshmen are interspersed across the floors, sharing the kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms with the brothers. But that’s about all they have in common. “Most of the freshmen who are here aren’t terribly musical or interested in music,” says McCormick freshman Geoff Pedrick. “There’s all the people in the fraternity who know each other and all of us who don’t really. It’s kind of awkward.”
If the placement of students this year seems random, it was. “The system is electronic,” D’Arienzo says. “If all of their choices were full, it would start to look for any available space that was open.”
For freshmen whose top five filled up, PARC seems to have been another place the computer found vacancies. “Almost everyone that I’ve spoken to didn’t ask to be put in PARC,” says McCormick freshman Dan Cohen, who lives there even though it was not one of his choices. “I’d say that the majority of people asked to be put on North Campus. A lot of people put Bobb and they got PARC instead,” he says.
Students who wanted to live elsewhere have formed their own sort of satellite communities in places they never thought they’d enjoy. “I think I’ve gotten along with everyone in the building,” Cohen says. “Mostly people that didn’t want to be in PARC.”
But if the core of PARC is now a composite of students who felt their interests were better matched in other dorms, part of PARC’s essence — an affinity for public affairs — is lost. “It’s a bunch of normal people that just happened to get put in PARC,” Cohen says. For the sophomores and upperclassmen who chose to live in PARC to be with similar-minded students, this isn’t good news. “I think some of them aren’t too happy,” Cohen says. As in most residential colleges, PARC holds firesides, which students attend to get points in order to live there again. But there’s no incentive for freshmen who didn’t want to live there in the first place. “We have these things called Coffee and Conversation where people show up and we don’t really talk, and sometimes nobody really shows up,” Cohen says. “I think some upperclassmen are upset about that.”
The North Campus wannabes in PARC may have made themselves heard in other ways. “The dynamic is a little different,” says Communication sophomore Rachel Kopilow, who is living in PARC for the second year in a row. “The freshmen this year are more outgoing. The dorm’s a little louder.”
But if many of the people who wanted to live in Bobb are living elsewhere, it’s unclear whether what once made Bobb-McCulloch a dorm mecca even exists anymore. Some say the identity that made it one of the most popular and notorious dorms on campus has already begun to shift. “I feel like Bobb was a lot rowdier last year,” says Bobb-McCulloch president Amy Wang, a Weinberg sophomore who also lived there last year. “To be honest, CA’s are a little bit more strict with the rules this year, and I think they are enforcing things like double occupancy and reporting everything, basically. And I think residents are aware of the fact that they are doing rounds and they are watching out for suspicious behavior.”
I lived in McCulloch my freshman year, in the first-floor hallway known affectionately as the Virgin Vault. When I moved in, I knew little of its reputation as the party dorm, a place too loud to study, where the standards of behavior were lower and CAs routinely turned the other cheek. But I learned quickly. The year I lived there, I remember water fountains torn from the walls, floods in the basement, vending machines smashed, trash bins overturned, people urinating on the floor. None of it surprised us. That was the character of Bobb.
Living in Bobb for the first time this year, McCormick sophomore Ryan Deeter is finding it exactly as he expected. “It’s pretty much usually loud any night of the week, people are always drunk, all the time,” he says. One Tuesday night, he found Busch Lite cans left on a urinal. Another Monday night, it was so loud he voiced his surprise to a guy he passed in the hallway. “He said, ‘Yeah, it was actually a lot worse last year,’” Deeter says.
But if students have noticed more rule enforcement, University Residential Life says it’s nothing they’re doing. “One of the pieces of evidence, I guess, is incident reports. That number is up a little bit from last year, but not significantly,” says Amy White, a Residential Life assistant director who is currently acting area coordinator in Bobb-McCulloch. Though four of the 11 CAs in Bobb-McCulloch are returning, which White says is average, students have felt a change in authority. Tyrone Newsome, the former area coordinator known for his understanding, left during the summer, and Res. Life has yet to hire a replacement. “Basically he had a really good relationship with everyone because he was willing to look past little things and not nitpick,” Wang says. “Bobb-McCulloch right now is transitioning. It’s just a new set of people who want to take the dorm in a different course.” Newsome would not comment.
Three years ago, when I told people I lived in Bobb-McCulloch, they gave me knowing looks. To others, from other freshmen to sorority women during recruitment, living in Bobb-McCulloch meant you drank several times during the week, went out to frat houses and the Deuce. If you lived in a small residential college, it meant you were quiet and preferred to study. But back then, people who wanted Bobb weren’t living in the music fraternity.
When Geoff Pedrick was assigned to 626 Emerson, also known as Phi Mu Alpha, he had no idea what it was. “It wasn’t really ever explained. I picked the dorms that were up north and I turned it in on time,” he says. “It was just kind of weird being put here and not knowing anything about it, and not having any sort of explanation as to why I was in such a strange place.”
Confusion and discontent have given rise to conspiracy theories about the administration intentionally trying to tame the reputations of the most infamous dorms by sending students wishing to live there somewhere else. There has also been a flurry of emails over the Bobb-McCulloch listserv from addresses like iamdrunkinbobb@gmail.com and savethebobbjungle@gmail.com spamming with gossip and endorsing a sort of booze-fueled anarchy. Behind the iamdrunkinbobb account is a group made up of both male and female residents, including several sophomores, who go by the pseudonym “Bobby Fay McCulloch.” One of them called me from a blocked number and, referring to himself in the third person just as “Bobby,” explained their agenda. “It’s helping Bobb loosen up a bit,” he says. “They’re cracking down in the most ridiculous capacity. They are destroying what Bobb is supposed to be.”
The spamming started innocently enough. Once, when the dorm government accidentally CC’d its residents on an email instead of bCC, several students took notice. They began sending the emails, generally late at night, drunk, and before long had inspired copycats to spam with other prank ideas, like “Professor Chaos,” who sent out a recording of what sounded like a party to be played as a “decoy” in empty rooms. So far, no one has been able to stop them. “Certainly we are interested in knowing who is doing that so that they can stop disrupting the other residents of the building,” White says. “We’re investigating but at this point we don’t know who is behind this.”
“Bobby Fay” continues to “encourage the residents, most of whom are here to be in one of the social capitals of NU, to have fun and enjoy college the way it’s meant to be enjoyed here — in a drunken, irresponsible, yet safe, stupor,” he writes in an email. He also supports the copycats for taking up his group’s cause, “keeping the spirit of Bobb alive.” He describes his dorm as a “jungle” or “wasteland.” He believes the administration is actively trying to change that. “Bobb’s always been the bastion of good fun,” he says. “They are trying to take that away from us.” According to him, “word on the street” is that Tyrone was fired, and Residential Life “actively scouted out the most hard-nosed anti-party CAs” for Bobb-McCulloch. “Freshmen who applied for Bobb, who put it first on their thing, almost none of them got it,” he says.
Administrators say that’s just not true. Housing assignments were computerized; Bobb-McCulloch CAs are given the same instructions as the rest. “We don’t expect them to be stricter than any other CA,” says Virginia Koch, senior assistant director of Residential Life. But whether or not it was intentional, the random dispersing of students across campus is changing the nature of the dorms, and with that new patterns of rule enforcement should follow. Shifts in the balance on campus, especially when students are displeased and feel a greater hand of authority, are bound to spark suspicion. But if a culture of conspiracy has flourished at NU, “Bobby Fay” embodies it. He’s terrified of getting caught by the administration, although White of Residential Life says the most he is guilty of is general annoyance. While the whole liststerv saga may seem extremely foolish and insignificant, the series of emails speaks to the value students place in the legacies of the dorms. “Maybe it would be good to be a martyr for the cause,” “Bobby” muses.
No matter what happens, the dorms are inevitably changing. If fewer freshmen choose where they live, the reputations of the residence halls will become more and more arbitrary and diluted. And in 50 years, if Northwestern sticks to the plan it unveiled in September, Bobb and McCulloch halls will be demolished, among other residences, their “spirits” nothing more than what we remember now.
The Daily Northwestern > The Weekly
Cover Story: Dorm Diaspora
This year, more than 200 freshmen are living in dorms they didn't choose. Those residents may forever change the character of the halls.
Published: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Updated: Saturday, October 10, 2009
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