Last week I went to the “Tell Us What You Really Think” Rose Cafe. Professor Hill talked a lot about building a living-learning communities on west similar to the colleges at Yale. This is very difficult to foster this kind of atmosphere because most of the people who live on west are doing it out of convenience, and picking houses simply based on where there are open beds.

I made a suggestion to hold fun events at the beginning of the semester to draw people in that are not part of the Rose Scholars program. Unfortunately, budgeting is an issue.

Another idea, though I’m sure it would be near impossible to implement, is to team soon-to-be rose residents with Rose Scholars or current Rose residents. The new residents can be paired with the resident that lives in the room they are going to be assigned to. They could see their new rooms, maybe join their upper-class mentors for dinner in the Rose dining room, or go on a tour of West. Certainly not a perfect solution, but it’s an idea to foster communication between rose house generations and build community. In my experience, students come visit the rooms they are going to live in either way.

Another idea is to promote the creation of a building group me, and get the building together for little events like movie nights. We did this last year in my building, and I made friends that otherwise probably would not have talked to.

In general the Rose Scholars program has been a great experience, but there are some ways it could improve, particularly when it comes to creating a community.