Residents from each of the campus residential halls are creating new crest designs for next year that will identify each of the newly formed residential learning colleges.
Each residence building will be renamed, and each residential college will have an identifying theme and crest.
The current Residential Learning College (RLC) will be renamed Beachside, and the Residence, Los Alamitos, Los Cerritos, and International House halls will be condensed into Hillside. Parkside will keep its name.
A competition between the current residents is underway to find a new crest design for the residence halls. The winning crests that residents vote on will represent the new colleges next year.
Paige Pelonis, a freshman double majoring in journalism and international studies, said she thinks it is strange to have a different crest for each new college.
“I don’t see why we’d want to have that kind of divide among the dorms, it kind of breaks residents apart rather than including them in the school as a whole,” Pelonis said.
While she is opposed to the crests, Pelonis does think that the contest is getting students excited.
Roberts-Corb mentioned that there is no preferred theme when it comes to the design of the crests. This is mainly because the crests are meant to represent the students.
Each college will eventually have their own classrooms where residents can take courses in certain subjects such as leadership or work ethics.
The main reason for the change is due to the success of the RLC, according to Housing Director Carol Roberts-Corb.
Roberts-Corb said that the goal of the new colleges is to create a smaller version of the university within the housing community. She also said the best learning occurs when the boundaries that divide school and dorms are not present.
“Colleges started out with students and faculty living together in one building,” Roberts-Corb said. “The new residential learning colleges are a movement to get back to those roots.”
Pre-biology major Ramvinski Sovann does not think the idea of three separate colleges is a good idea for the residence halls.
“Dorms are supposed to be a place to rest; a place where you can hang out when you are done [with class],” Sovann said. “Classes in the dorms would make residents lazy.”
Another goal of the learning communities is to give students a sense of community and identity as a college.
Roberts-Corb said that this sense of community would hopefully attract more students to return to the dorms.
Roberts-Corb reminds students that the new learning communities will take time to be fully completed, and that student involvement is critical during the process.