Stephen Lumetta
News Editor
The Cross-Cultural Connections (C3) Program will be moving out of Babcock Hall for next year. The program will move into Westminster Cottage, and if it needs additional space, into Troyer House as well.
Babcock will become an entirely first-year hall next year, said Nathan Fein, director of Residence Life. Douglass Hall will house only upperclassmen.
The decision to move came after Yorgun Marcel, the managing director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI), met with Fein.
Marcel says he did not specifically request or reject the idea of moving the C3 Program into a house, but he wanted to fix two big weaknesses of C3 that previous coordinators had noted. The first problem was that C3 was too big to build “a truly meaningful living learning community,” said Marcel.
“In considering what we believed to be an ideal size for the program, and through discussions with the Res Life staff, it was determined that a house would probably meet this new direction,” said Marcel. “We settled on Westminster, which Res Life has had difficulty filling to capacity with students who belong to a same program, but which would hold what we believe to be the ideal size of the C3 program.”
Marcel noted that the second weakness of the C3 Program was that some students sought to join C3 solely in order to live in Babcock Hall. He is optimistic that the move will go well.
“Ultimately, C3 is intended to be a living learning community. I think if afforded the time, this approach will strengthen the identity of the C3 program, the intensity of the experience for its participants and challenge them to fully embrace the notion of building a living learning community with individuals that once were mere acquaintances or total strangers,” said Marcel.
Wendy Kuzmishin ’16, a member of the C3 executive team, said “I’m optimistic that the move to a house will be beneficial to C3. I think that this change gives us an opportunity to build a stronger community of learners and global citizens. Living in a house provides a more intimate setting for members of C3 to get to know one another.”
However, Kuzmishin noted that there are some downsides and logistical challenges to moving out of a dorm: the majority of C3 events will still occur in Babcock, where the CDI is located. Additionally, she said that they had to turn away applicants who were studying abroad because houses do not offer the flexibility that Babcock did: the availability of single-occupancy rooms in Babcock made it easy to switch people out.
But Marcel said that the strength of the C3 program is not based in its location.
“If the strength of the program in its current state solely resides in its physical location, then we have failed in delivering the living learning community C3 is intended to be,” said Marcel.