The pivot to college life, both socially and academically, can be uncomfortable and abrupt — with a packed schedule, new environments to acclimate to and, for some, a new city to call home. To help ease the transition for those who live on campus at UO, particularly first-year students who are required to do so, UO has created a wide array of housing communities. Residential Communities (RC), student housing cohorts put together based on shared interests, values or identities, offer a variety of events and activities. Academic Residential Communities, while similar, also require these student cohorts to participate in seminars and classes together.
“It just makes the first year of college easier,” Jessica Winders, UO’s assistant director for academic residential and research initiatives, said. “It helps you get a roadmap in place, and your questions can be answered as they come up. If you’re coming to UO with a lot of uncertainty, not at all sure about what it’s going to be like on campus, these communities are a really safe and awesome way to help that transition.”
Led by UO students and faculty, these communities also bolster student well-being via cohort events, study groups, faculty mentorship and opportunities to participate in events like the Undergraduate Research Symposium that may typically be out of reach for first-year students, according to Winders. Five of UO’s housing communities are identity-based, which can present a unique sense of community and safety for students belonging to the respective groups. These communities provide a unique sense of identity-based community and safety that work to build interpersonal connections and resources for their students — a goal that has been maintained throughout the pandemic.
Finding solidarity in identity
Four of these identity-based housing communities are ARCs — Latinx Scholars, LGBTQIA+ Scholars, Native American & Indigenous Studies and Umoja Black Scholars — while one, the Gender Expansive Residential Community, is an RC. These communities can help provide students with resources and connections in support of their identities that they might not have otherwise found so early on in their college careers.
For Emma Howard, a UO student and the programmatic support assistant for the Gender Expansive Residential Community, identity-based ARCs and RCs often function as critical safe spaces for marginalized groups.
“For trans and non-binary folks in my community, there’s a lot of harmful and destabilizing legislation and rhetoric being pushed out across the country right now,” Howard said. “It’s important to have a space where they feel safe, and there are a lot of cool ways that our community is being made safer for those kids, like making all the bathrooms in the RC gender-neutral.”
While most housing communities have a common area and various characteristics in common, each has its own unique structure, priorities and events. According to Winders, the teams in charge of these programs are often composed of “stakeholders” that can contribute to the ARCs’ and RCs’ ongoing success and help meet the goals and needs of their students. For identity-based communities, these stakeholders often reflect the demographic that the community represents, enabling them to more effectively advocate for students’ needs.
Audrey Lucero, a UO associate professor of education and the director of UO’s Latinx Studies program, is a stakeholder in the Latinx ARC. As one of the ARC’s faculty directors, one of her top priorities is to connect students with Latinx groups and faculty that can help them through the rest of their college experience.
“We’re trying to build community early in their career so they can grow and blossom,” Lucero said. “That can mean connecting them with faculty/staff who also identify as Latinx, to see that we are there to support them and as a resource… that can also mean helping them get connected to other students and groups on campus like MEChA, Mujeres and anywhere where they particularly feel they can find community.”
Many students — with a wide range of lived experiences — join ARCs and RCs looking to meet others with similar backgrounds. Lucero said students coming from more diverse areas like Woodburn, Oregon might be shocked by UO’s less diverse population, while others from predominantly White high schools or certain rural areas might have never had the opportunity to find community in that way.
“So many of the applications we get are people coming from small towns, rural towns, conservative areas or families where they’re not necessarily comfortable being themselves,” Jason Anajovich, the student coordinator for the LGBTQIA+ Scholars ARC, said. “Knowing that every person around you to some degree understands you, and can empathize with what you’ve gone through, is such a different experience for so many people.”
Applying for housing communities
Students can apply for ARCs and RCs when filling out their housing registration forms. Each housing community asks students to answer two questions specific to the community, which are then reviewed by the individual teams that lead the ARC or RC, according to Lucero and Winders. With a limited number of slots available, particularly for ARCs which also have limited classroom space for required courses, not everyone who applies is guaranteed admission.
“We’re looking for genuine answers, and trying to find those students who are going to really benefit from being in the community, and really invest their time into creating that cohort and getting the academic components out of the community,” Winders said. “We’re working on making space for more students… some ARCs have more applications than there are slots to live on campus, or participate in the classroom, while others have a lot of room and we’re trying to get the word around.”
While identity-based communities are not necessarily exclusive to students belonging to said identity, applicants should not enter them in an extractive mindset — hoping to be educated by their residents or get something novel out of the experience, Howard said.
“We absolutely allow folks who are not trans or gender non-conforming if they can show their dedication to the well-being of the community,” Howard said. “It’s maybe not a space for folks who simply want to learn more about gender expansive folks, or for cis folks to come in and try and be better allies — we don’t want to put that burden on our community.”
Likewise, applicants should be mindful of the purpose and goals of the ARC they choose to apply for, Lucero said.
“There are certainly people in the ARC even now who do not identify as Latinx,” Lucero said. “But it is not designed as a platform for us to educate others about the experience of being Latinx at the University of Oregon.”
Learning to connect remotely
Although housing communities have continued their services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the realities of virtual events and the pandemic’s impacts on student mental health have posed difficulties for students and faculty. Shifting guidelines around mask mandates and public health measures have forced ARCs and RCs to make difficult decisions.
“Programming has been a bit of a rollercoaster this year, so the majority of the events I’ve planned have been virtual,” Anajovich said. “That in turn has influenced student engagement because at this point who really wants to go to another virtual event?”
In spite of pandemic-related concerns, students have often found comfort in participating in their housing communities, virtually or not.
“We’ve heard from students that it meant a lot to have a community that they belonged to during the pandemic, especially during periods where they couldn’t be on campus or be in-person for most activities,” Winders said.
Looking to the future
Housing communities are hoping to use the continued shift toward in-person activities to offer a broader array of activities and events for its students to participate in.
“For next term, we’re hoping to transition to more outdoor-based activities; the weather might be nicer, COVID might be less of a concern and so on, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed,” Anajovich said.
The pandemic has also prevented housing communities from engaging with other groups and organizations on campus to the same extent as before. The transition away from virtual events could open up new opportunities for cross-campus cooperation for ARCs and RCs.
“I think a lot more partnership and collaboration is something that I’m looking forward to for next year,” Lucero said. “For instance, [before COVID-19] we tended to partner with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art to provide a hands-on artistic engagement opportunity for students, but we haven’t been able to do things like that the past two years… I’d also like to see collaborations with other ARCs, and opportunities to engage with others outside of the ARC as a whole.”
In spite of ongoing pandemic uncertainty, Howard still believes that identity-based housing communities are a net positive for incoming students.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to live surrounded by people who are similar to you, who might be able to help you navigate your unique identities and experiences because they’ve gone through something similar themselves,” Howard said. “It’s also a great opportunity to make close and meaningful friends at UO after two years where that has been significantly harder.”
Students can begin applying to housing communities once admitted to the university as part of their housing registration in the spring. While they may be interested in several ARCs and RCs, they are only permitted to apply to one at a time. Interested students can visit the UO Housing website for more information.
