UVa nixes 1st-year housing choice

The Cavalier Daily reports today that the UVa administration has decided to no longer allow incoming first-year students to choose between the McCormick and Alderman Road dorms. Instead, they must either choose one of the Residential Colleges (Brown/IRC/Hereford) or allow themselves to be randomly placed somewhere in the New/Old Dorms complex. The change will take effect with this year's incoming class.

For years, Old Dorms have been stereotyped as nearly all-white breeding grounds for fraternities and sororities while New Dorms are widely considered more heterogeneous. Officials usually blame self-selection due to opinions incoming students hear from upperclassman about what kind of housing they should opt for. Presumably, this works both ways, with some minority students seeking a greater concentration of non-white students in New Dorms and some white students looking for students like themselves in Old Dorms, although officials rarely mention this latter possibility. The administration plainly designed the move to end this practice and diversify the entire first-year housing area.

One has to wonder whether reality or perception played a greater role here. While the perceptions of housing self-segregation are widespread, actually finding numbers supporting them takes some doing. A 1999 Cav Daily article listed the McCormick dorms as 82% white compared to 67% for Alderman (today, whites make up 63% of all students, though I'd venture the number was higher 9 years ago). I'm still looking for more recent numbers.

The numbers, however, may be irrelevant. Regardless of the current figures, the perception of self-segregation, or more specifically the perception that some minority students feel like they need to self-segregate to find a supportive community, makes the school look bad. Getting rid of first-year housing choice may help the University shed part of that reputation. Whether it will actually help expose students to "diversity" remains to be seen.