The Rose Cafés are a key way to bring community on West together; however, I do feel that they are somewhat exclusive to Rose house members alone, which really limits our ability to engage with students from other houses. While I am a strong proponent for continuing Rose House events that draw from a pool of Rose residents, I would encourage planning an event once or twice in the semester that would include inter-residency mixing.

On another note, I would like either more Rose café events to be offered throughout the week or other events with that amount of time commitment. I usually find the café events most manageable. However, this semester was a struggle for me because I was able to attend café events only when my night class canceled (only three). The solution to this was to make as many of the Friday night film screenings as possible, which although I think are very convenient and which I really enjoy (given that I am a cinephile), I found to be quite exhausting having to balance them with my Cinematography and Screenwriting courses, which require me to attend a certain number of film screenings at the Cornell Cinema per semester. I think this amount of watching films becomes quite overwhelming, and I would encourage for the Rose house events to allow students in these situations to substitute (once or twice) the house requirement with fulfilling a course requirement especially when it seems to overlap to such an extent. In regards to the Friday film screenings, I also think they take away from attending screenings at the Cornell Cinema or even the live performance ones at Sage Chapel, which I find to be an incredibly important cinematic experience that should be encouraged above one in a dining hall room where the color calibration from projector to screen and the sound quality is not as immersive as in a dark theater space.

As a double major and a scholar, I am also committed to attending many extracurricular events (receptions and lectures–all of which I find to be immensely exciting and valuable), which often conflict with the Rose house events (ones that are oftentimes study breaks and bonding). I would suggest that perhaps going forward, the Rose house events can include more student input in the types of events that are held.