Last week, I went to hear House Professor Blalock reflect on his time here at Cornell, now that his 6 year term is about to end. Cornell has a policy that they can only hold that position for 6 years before someone new has to be brought in. If it wasn’t for this, I suspect Professor Blalock would stay longer. From his discussion of some of the projects he has helped with over the years, I appreciated his conscientiousness. One of his favorite projects, founding the Rose Scholars Program, was born out of this. He questioned the system of a random number generator determining who could return to Rose House, and thought it should be more merit based. I totally agree with this approach, as it gives students the opportunity to take control if they really enjoy living here.

However, when Professor Blalock asked us about what Rose House means to us, the general consensus seemed to be that it lacks a sense of community. Many of the students don’t really get to know each other, even if they live on the same floor. Professor Blalock explained that they have learned that the architecture of the dorms plays a roll in this, and that the administration will hopefully take this into account when designing the new dorms on North Campus which are to come in the future. However, for the existing dorms, probably the only way to get past this issue is to organize more events for the students to get to know each other. I wouldn’t suggest ice breakers, as most including myself either don’t know them or believe they are ineffective. Instead, I think that just organizing events for each floor would probably be a good way to deal with the issue. This will be something for the next house professor to deal with. But we all greatly appreciate Professor Blalock’s service to the Rose House community, and he will be missed.