The Office of Student Life is introducing the Randall Student Engagement Community, an initiative to combine student interests with intentional community living. “It can be the things that you already do. If you’re in a club that already does these things, it just adds a live-in aspect to it,” said AC Taylor (‘14), Director of Student Engagement. Students select a focus area under which they can clarify their specific interest within the overarching theme, or focus.
Focus areas include but are not limited to:
- Creation Care
- Engaging the Arts
- Spiritual Formation
- Global Engagement
- Vocation & Calling
- Athletics & Wellness
- Other
Students will be expected to engage in their topic inside and outside of their house. Once a semester, each house will engage the community in some way, either putting on a themed event, or putting up a table in the campus center or posters across campus. Funding will be provided for each group for that purpose. Taylor notes, “It’s not like ‘Here, figure it out,’ it’s ‘We have money for you to do your programming.’” Taylor also pointed out that the Randall houses will cost less than regular townhouses next year.
The students will live in the Randall Townhouses, but a group of students does not have to fit in a single townhouse–it can be smaller or bigger–and it can include both men and women. The members of the group can be split into two or more townhouses depending on the group’s size and gender ratio. As stated on the application page, “Students can apply as individuals, roommate pairs, half filled houses, or full 8 person houses. Those without full houses would be able to select other incomplete houses to form a full house with multiple themes.”
There have been similar themed living arrangements at Houghton in the past, including themed townhouses, and a Sustainability House; that group lived in Brown House, the brick house behind Luckey Building. At another time, a group of women lived together in a set-aside group of rooms in Gillette. “Part of the problem you can see right there in the statistics, it was mostly women,” said Paul Young, our academic dean, “so this new approach is designed to be flexible for that, but with definite hopes of having more men and women involved.”
Applications are now open for the Randall Student Engagement Community and can be found under the Student Programs tab on the Houghton College website.