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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Alex Eisner: Taking a critical eye to LLCs

Living and Learning Cohorts (or LLCs) started more than 25 years ago at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They were designed to give students the opportunity for group involvement with the people with whom they live. While their mission statement is filled with fluff words such as “academic engagement,” “institutional commitment” and “educational pursuits,” LLCs are really just another program for universities (in this particular case housing departments) to throw money at, for very little return.

UMass attempted to do a study to justify LLCs by measuring the quality of academic experience, grade point averages and one-year retention rate (the number of people that return to the university after their first-year) for a sample of their first year students – half in LLCs and half not. For those in LLCs quality of experience was up by .14 percent, GPAs were up by .41 percent and the retention rate was up by about 5 percent over those not in LLCs. So obviously that means that the LLCs are working, right?

Come on. As any one that has ever had an introductory research or statistics course can tell you, correlation does not mean causation. Is it equally, if not more logical to say that the students who are in LLCs are also the students that are going to be involved in other extracurricular activities and are going to be better students either way? The students that take the initiative to form and stay involved with LLCs are often the same ones that are active in numerous other student organizations.

An especially frustrating element about LLCs is the supposed justification of the money. According to averages calculated by information provided by GW Housing Programs, Thurston Upper (the top five floors) has 20 first year LLCs and each LLC has about 19 people in it. GW Housing Programs gives $30 per member for first year LLCs. By my calculations, GW is spending about $11,400 on Thurston Upper alone.

That’s 10,822 roles of Charmin two-ply toilet paper. That’s 4,977 loads of laundry. But no, instead we need to be spending money on such LLCs as Cookies and Colbert, a popular LLC last year that paid for students to eat cookies and watch the Colbert Report, or Political Fashion, or Poker and Politics. This is just throwing money away (and believe me, I love cookies just as much as the next guy).

To a large extent I believe we should avoid pulling the tuition card. As it is we hear “they charge us $50,000 and still we don’t have.” every day. But in this case I’m left to wonder just who really thinks that this is a good use of my tuition money?

This all goes back to assigning themes to residence halls. In a collegiate climate where it is extremely popular to have a diverse campus to give students the opportunity to meet and socialize with people that are different from them, GW has decided to group people of like minds together. As if this isn’t ironic enough, LLCs are an “opportunity” for people to get involved with the people they live with – people who are interested in the same exact things. Instead of being allowed to explore new interests and hobbies, students are pigeonholed into politics, or the arts or whatever theme their residence hall carries.

Now I’m not saying that all LLCs are bad or that LLCs don’t add to people’s overall satisfaction of college. Some LLCs are actually productive and engaging organizations. There is one in Thurston called Exploring the Embassies that has a very noble purpose. They go around to different embassies and learn about their country and their culture. But the majority of LLCs spend time and money on things that are trivial at best.

Here’s a thought: lower housing costs. Maybe we don’t need to be spending large amounts of housing money on LLCs when there are obviously other things that many students would like more. The benefits of saving money or spending it on more directly beneficial programs significantly outweigh the price we are all paying for GW students to play poker. Even proponents of LLCs would have to admit that there are better ways of spending our housing fees than funding our college gambling habits. While LLCs may look impressive on paper and have the potential to do some good, the simply fact remains that they are too costly to make up for the little good they may or may not ultimately achieve.

The writer is a freshman
majoring in political science.

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