The realm of Harry Potter will soon be coming to Cal State Long Beach housing – only the new residential learning colleges will not be called Gryffindor or Slytherin.
Next year, the campus residence halls will be split up into three residential learning colleges, according to Housing Director Carol Roberts-Corb.
The current Residential Learning College (RLC) will be renamed Beachside College, while the International House, Residence, Los Alamitos and Los Cerritos halls will be condensed into Hillside College. The Parkside dorms will keep its name.
Each college will also have its own crest, giving each their own identity.
“It’s kind of like Harry Potter, without the sorting hat,” Roberts-Corb said.
The goal of the change is to integrate the out-of-class experience with the student living experience, according to Roberts-Corb.
“It is also meant to bring students and faculty closer together,” Roberts-Corb said.
Some students, like freshman computer engineering major Ero Vedar, are confused about the shift to the newstyle.
“I don’t know or understand why the school is referring to them as colleges,” Vedar said. “It’s a nice touch and perhaps a bit of incentive to make living on campus a bit more attractive, but it also seems very misleading.”
Sophomore music performance major Jackson Niebrugge thinks that the idea of each college having their own crest is a good idea, but also sees it as problematic because people will start fighting over which college is better.
In a presentation to the residential housing senate, Roberts-Corb said that each college would have their own living learning community. In these communities, students will be able to take classes that relate to a certain subject, such as sustainability.
Roberts-Corb also said that the planned dining hall renovations would work hand-in-hand with this change, and classrooms will eventually be added, like in the RLC.
Nicolas Diaz, senior English major, said that having classes in the dorms would allow housing to get more recognition from the main campus.
“People who don’t live on campus may not be aware about campus housing, and by putting classes in Hillside and Parkside, it allows for better integration between housing and the main campus,” Diaz said.
Roberts-Corb said that next year’s changes would not focus so much on the renovations, but more on the names of the new colleges.
She said that she does not want to raise students’ rates to fund the new additions to the colleges.
“I want to be judicious and fair and want students to know that I am very thoughtful about [rising rates],” Roberts-Corb said. “If the rates do go up, it won’t be because of the renovation.”
