Rather coincidentally, I was in Target picking out throw pillows when I got the email I had been waiting for since getting accepted to Stanford. The subject line read, “Your Stanford Housing Assignment.”

I was careful filling out my Approaching Stanford forms, and had been very certain that I selected the preference for an all-frosh dorm.

Disappointment crept over me when I saw that had been assigned to Norcliffe in Lagunita Court, a four class dorm almost as far from the freshmen cluster of Stern and Wilbur as once can get. I told myself that I would still have a freshman experience at Stanford. I would still meet other freshmen, go out with friends, and participate in all the stupid, reckless things one does for the first time living away from home.

However, it became apparent to me very quickly that the four-class and freshman dorm experience are two very different things. Friends I’d known pre-Stanford hung out with their friends in dorm rooms until the early hours of the morning, and ate lunch in a dining hall where they knew everyone, while my dorm shut down by the time quiet hours began.

It was not until the end of the year that I realized the friends I’d made, from the wise upperclassmen warning me away from taking certain classes to the fellow freshmen who ran through the hallways while trying not to disturb stressed junior neighbors writing co-term applications, that I’d made some of the most meaningful relationships of my life thus far. Instead of meeting the entirety of Lagunita Hall, I found myself with a small group of friends I would follow to any class, simply to suffer in solidarity with them.

When I found out that Stanford was raising the ResX Task Force as a part of the Long Range Planning process I stopped to think about how four-class housing shaped my freshman year.

I think the reason why four-class housing has such a poor reputation on campus is because many people think that four-class housing does not give the “full” Stanford freshman experience. The reality, however, is that no “full” Stanford freshman experience exists. Every individual’s freshmen year is drastically different regardless of housing.

Living with upperclassmen also does not create a problem. The upperclassmen in my dorm were nothing but kind, quirky, wise fellow students, and eventually friends. I matured living with them, and was able to see past a lot of the things some freshmen fixate on, such as grades or social status.

The problem with four-class housing actually comes from the distance between dorms.

Wilbur Hall, the easternmost of the freshmen dorms, sits three-quarters of a mile away from Norcliffe and Roble, and half of a mile away from Flo-Mo, the closest four-class dorm to the freshmen cluster of dorms. In my room on a Thursday night, I could go onto Snapchat and see acquaintances lounging in each other’s rooms, or playing night basketball on Wilbur Field. Three-quarters of a mile may not seem like much, but it’s a long way to go simply to hang out, only to make the cold and solitary ride back to West Campus later on.

I felt left out. I wasn’t able to infiltrate or become a part of the bond that came from living among the majority of my class. The people I met who lived in freshman dorms I saw so sporadically they hardly remembered me, and I could never be a part of the community of individual dorms or halls. I was afraid that if I tried to insert myself into the east campus world, I would sacrifice being a member of the community I actually lived in.

I chose the dorm I lived in, and would do the exact same if I had the opportunity to live my freshman year again.

But the reality is that I did not meet the majority of my freshman class.

I think ResX should keep four-class dorms on campus. However, they need to address the sacrifice they ask freshmen living on west campus to make, between becoming a part of their own dorm community, and making an effort to be a part of the majority freshman community. Perhaps freshmen shouldn’t be clustered together, with a smaller portion of the class pushed to the far side of campus. A more equal distribution of frosh would prevent the exclusive feeling Wilbur and Stern have. Maybe the solution is to house freshmen in four-class dorms closer to where the all-freshmen dorms are, so that the matter of distance doesn’t hold future frosh from both meeting as many people as they can and playing a role in their own dorm. No freshman stepping foot on Stanford’s campus for the first time should feel alienated from their class.

I loved Norcliffe, and truly cannot thank the staff or my fellow residents enough for making it such a wonderful experience. I only wonder if ResX could create a more cohesive freshman community from changing the distribution of freshmen on campus, and thinking about how your community is shaped by your neighbors.

Contact Christina Sakellaris at cgsak ‘at’ stanford.edu.