Starting in the fall of 2024, Pomona College will introduce two new housing options for all rising sophomores, juniors and seniors: the Lavender/Audre Lorde Gender & Sexuality Residential Themed Community and Roaming Together: Outdoor Adventure (OA) Residential Themed Community.
An announcement was sent to all Pomona students Feb. 15 via email informing them of these residential-themed communities and more information was given in an information session Feb. 21. Announcements of acceptances into the themed halls were announced March 8.
Steven Jubert, associate dean of Campus Life and director of Residential Life at Pomona, explained that these communities are meant to foster opportunities for students to find connections outside of a classroom setting.
“The goals are simply really to provide another way for students to engage outside of the classroom,” Jubert said. “This will be an opportunity for students who have an interest … with some of the things that are happening in the Queer Resource Center (QRC) to tap into that and to connect with some students that have similar interests … similar to the [Outdoor Education Center (OEC) themed community].”
The Lavender/Audre Lorde Gender & Sexuality Residential Themed Community will be located in Walker Hall next semester and will be centered around learning and engaging with topics of gender, sexual and romantic orientation, sexual health and social justice in a partnership between Housing and Residence Life (HRL) and the QRC.
The Roaming Together: OA Residential Themed Community will be located in Harwood Hall next semester and will be centered around exploring interests in outdoor topics such as recreation, skill-building, local outdoor opportunities, environmental conservation and sustainability in a partnership between HRL and the OEC.
Students interested in the residential-themed communities had to submit an application by March 3 consisting of responses that expressed their interest in the community of their choice. Accepted students are guaranteed a single room in Harwood or Walker Hall, depending on their assigned community.
Anna Marston PO ’27, a student who applied to live in the OA community, noted many pros to applying to live in such a community, including skipping the room-drawing process and having the guarantee of a single. Another upside Marston noted was the ability to find a connection with and learn from peers who share similar interests.
“I want to get more exposure to other outdoor activities I might not normally do because obviously everyone living in the community is not going to like exactly the same outdoor stuff,” she said. “I’m hoping to learn more from others and what they like to do.”
These residence halls are a relatively new concept to Pomona with Oldenborg being the most similar to these new halls. Oldenborg is an existing themed residence hall at Pomona that is organized based on spoken languages, with the goal of helping students learn and develop community and culture.
“We have Oldenborg, which is a living and learning community … and that’s been a staple here,” Jubert said. “Oldenborg [is] the closest thing to that [on] a larger scale and has a very historical component.”
One difference between these communities and Oldenborg is that students who live in the communities in either Harwood or Walker will be among other students not in the community.
“You could have a person that’s in the themed community and then a few doors down someone that’s not,” Jubert said.
Jubert noted that one reason these themed communities are being piloted is to gauge student interest in the offering. This comes in contrast to Oldenborg, a community that takes up an entire building.
“I don’t think that there are any plans to have a full building dedicated to one of these particular communities,” Jubert said. “We’ll see … if there’s a huge interest maybe, but I don’t foresee that being the case. It’s something that’s new and we want to see how it turns out.”
Abraham Arias PO ’24, last year’s North Campus representative — a student elected by students living on Pomona’s North Campus to represent their interests to the Associated Students of Pomona College Senate — commented on the similarities between Oldenborg and these affinity-themed communities.
“I think Oldenborg was kind of like a test run for what that could look like and it was successful,” Arias said. “So I think we’re basing it more on our own experience as an institution.”
In developing these new residential-themed communities, Jubert noted that conversations with student representatives were of high importance.
“We had some conversations briefly last year with some of the … North Campus and South Campus representatives … and then it wasn’t until this year where we actually got to some of the implementation of it,” Jubert said.
As noted by Jubert, the housing committee, comprised of student representatives such as Arias, played a large role in the discussion surrounding the creation of these communities thanks to their knowledge and observations of housing life at Pomona.
“As a North Campus rep, I noticed there’s a lot of disconnect in terms of dorm communities; people don’t really interact with their neighbors a lot,” Arias said. “I think it’s going to be a really positive experience … I’m excited to come back years later and hear about how it went. I’m expecting good things.”
Jubert noted another especially important part of developing these communities was to maintain a close relationship with campus partners, especially the ORQ and OEC.
“We [touched] base with the QRC and OEC about some of the work that they’re doing and how we can probably continue some of the partnerships that we already have with some of the work that they’re doing,” Jubert said. “They were on board to partner with us to do some of this and so then we started to explore what the opportunity will look like.”
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