The College will not require this year’s affinity communities — Eban House, La Casa, International House, and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Space — to reapply for housing for the 2024–25 academic year.
All four communities will likely remain in their current locations. Theme and special interest communities, however, will have to reapply next year, and their placements remain undecided.
Director of Residential Life and Housing Patricia Leahey-Hays first announced the revised plan at a Residential Life Advisory Committee (RLAC) meeting on Sept. 28.
These plans replace the Office of Campus Life’s (OCL) earlier proposal — announced at an RLAC meeting on Sept. 14 — to move all Theme/Affinity/Program/Special Interest (TAPSI) communities to Mark Hopkins, which drew intense criticism from students.
At the Sept. 28 meeting, Leahey-Hays also announced that the College will establish a task force, likely to be chaired by Dean of the College Gretchen Long, to investigate the future of housing for affinity communities. Additionally, OCL staff will meet with representatives from other colleges and universities to study alternative models of affinity housing.
“Honestly, it was a nice sigh of relief,” Will Ding ’24, Co-Community Coordinator (CC) of AAPI Space, said about the changes. “In my opinion, it was good progress.”
Co-CC of Eban Amirah Parker ’26 said that though she welcomed OCL’s new plans, the adjustments were overdue and constituted only the “bare minimum.”
“It paints the picture that we have to fight for everything,” she said. “To burden affinity groups in general with the problem of not knowing if they’ll have a safe and secure place to live … is something that shouldn’t be happening at this stage.”
Leahey-Hays said she decided to revise OCL’s plans after hearing feedback both at the RLAC meeting on Sept. 14 and at subsequent meetings with students.
“To know that students feel like you failed them is hard — and that is never our intention,” Leahey-Hays told the Record. She added that she will be hosting drop-in office hours on Friday, Oct. 6, from 1:15 to 3:15 p.m., where students can bring their concerns about housing to OCL.
Students initially intended to protest the Sept. 28 RLAC meeting in response to the Mark Hopkins proposal, distribute flyers with demands to reconsider the future of TAPSI housing, and refuse to leave until OCL staff scheduled a time to speak with them.
However, they called off the demonstration hours before its scheduled start time after Leahey-Hays sent an email to members of RLAC saying that she would be presenting updates she “hoped [would] be well-received” and that she would be dedicating time during the meeting to a “listening and reflection session” on affinity houses and spaces on campus.
The students’ demonstration flyers demanded that OCL institutionalize permanent Black, Latinx, and AAPI housing; clearly and intentionally include students in conversations about housing; prioritize the safety of marginalized students; and not allow affinity spaces to become collateral damage in the housing process. The flyers can now be found outside of OCL.
“These spaces are vital for the mental and physical well-being of students of marginalized identities,” the flyers state. “We refuse to allow Housing to displace us, leaving us more susceptible to the harm that this institution carries in all aspects of student life.”
Though members of RLAC expressed frustration about the move to Mark Hopkins at the Sept. 14 meeting, a demonstration would have allowed for greater student participation, Ding said.
The plan to host the demonstration originated during a meeting on Sept. 24 at Spencer House, where La Casa is located, according to La Casa resident Mariel Baez ’26.
La Casa residents had approved a facilities request for other students to use Spencer for a party that Saturday — but by the end of the night, common spaces were littered and damaged.
“I’ve never seen any other house be trashed as much as Spencer was,” CC of La Casa Arlett Cabrera ’26 said. “That was kind of the spark for us.” Residents of the house felt disrespected by both OCL and other students following the news of the move to Mark Hopkins and the weekend’s events, she said.
After the Sept. 24 meeting, the CCs of La Casa reached out to the CCs of Eban, International House, and AAPI Space, as well as members of the Junior Advisor Advisory Board (JAAB) to plan the demonstration. Over the next few days, Dani Sanchez ’24, Jules Gaskin-West ’24 and CCs of affinity spaces began drafting their list of demands.
Students deliberately kept the plans to protest the meeting hidden from OCL staff out of concern that they would cancel or reschedule the meeting. Leahey-Hays said that a student notified OCL staff about the plans to host a demonstration only after the RLAC meeting occurred.
According to Leahey-Hays, OCL staff were always willing to adapt plans for next year’s TAPSI housing based on student input. “There was a misunderstanding that there was no room for discussion or listening at the original RLAC meeting,” she said. “Walking away from it, I can understand why students were either confused or concerned or thinking that there was no room for conversation… But for myself, [the Sept. 14 RLAC meeting] was to gain an understanding of the concerns and the challenges and benefits from a student perspective.”
Senior Area Coordinator Zach Cramer said he hosts regular conversations with the CCs of TAPSI communities to discuss current and future programming.
“There’s always room for student voices and student feedback, no matter where we are in the process,” he said. He added that his office remains open to students who wish to discuss issues regarding housing.
But in interviews with the Record, students repeatedly expressed that they felt let down by OCL staff. These students said OCL never sought to include the input of affinity residents in their decision-making processes.
“We’re constantly making meetings, and they’re [OCL] constantly telling us the same thing: ‘We’re trying to work with you guys,’ or ‘We’re trying to help,’ or ‘We understand’ — and they don’t because if they did, they wouldn’t do things like this,” Parker said.
“This could have been a conversation rather than a demonstration,” Baez said. “It simply never was, because they never created the space for conversation.”
Ding also called on OCL to work with students to establish permanent affinity spaces at the College. “Anything institutional takes time,” he said. “Everyone knows that. [The plan for] 2024-25 buys a year, but what’s the point of buying a year if, at the end of the day post-2025, you have nothing to show for it?”
