Theme houses are tight knit communities, but every semester they suffer turnover as members go abroad or graduate. The majority of member changes occur at the end of the school year when seniors graduate and rising sophomores are first able to apply. The turnover between the fall and spring semesters is much smaller but presents its own challenges.
All themed groups are given a house for the school year, but they are required to submit a new roster before Thanksgiving break, said The Associate Director of Residence Life and Housing Operations Stacie Olney LaPierre. While Residence Life asks to be aware of the application process, it is the student members of the house that are responsible for filling the roster. “The themes are a very student run process, we have to run the administrative piece of it, but we really want them to be choosing the members they think will be best for their group,” said Ms. LaPierre.
The process of filling out a new roster varies slightly between house to house based on factors like size and amount of returning members. Some theme houses like Commons College will often replace all members going off campus with former members who are coming back to SLU. Most of the time however, themes go through a smaller version of their usual end of school year recruiting process to gain new members.
“Although the fall to spring application process is the same as the spring to fall process it is more condensed,” said Hub president Bryan Mathis. Despite the fact that the shorter timespan can make it harder to advertise and recruit members, this is offset by the fact that the turnover is much smaller. The average turnover is usually three to four people for larger houses like Commons and the Hub, and one to two for smaller residences like the Dub.
According to LaPierre, if themes are unable to fill their rosters, Residence Life has the power to assign students to them. Due to lack of housing on campus, Residence Life only does this when it is necessary. As a preventative measure, it encourages members to keep trying to find applicants ever after the roster deadline if they happen to come up short. LaPierre added that over the past four years, the only theme house to have students assigned to it by Residence Life has been
the International House,
which LaPierre said is a slightly different situation due to its location in Sykes.
Although theme houses are usually able to fill vacant spots, inducting new members into the house community mid-
year can be challenging.
“At the beginning of the year everyone is kind of transitioning into the new year and figuring out what their social and house roles are going to be, but in the middle of the year everybody is already established.” said Dub member Kristen Jovanelly. This is one of the reasons Residence Life doesn’t want to assign students to houses, as it can be awkward for both the theme and the placed student if one is placed in a theme.
“Our main objective is to make sure that the themes are filling their spaces for the spring,” Ms. LaPierre said. Beyond that the process is student run, and while it can be challenging, according to Commons College president Bridget Fleming, “it gives the themes the chance to gather a mix of personalities that mesh well and complement each other.”