Moussaka, electric bills, and longbubble baths: the pleasures of life beyond residential college courtyards

It takes a special sort of Yale student to live off-campus. You have to place a high value on certain things: 30 square feet of personal space, a bathtub, the ability to make chocolate-chip cookies at three in the morning. You have to put a correspondingly lower value on other things: instant Internet access, a two-minute commute, four flavors of ice cream at every meal. But if I'm like most people, the decision to move off is more than a simple cost-benefit analysis. There are certain intangible, almost moral, considerations on both sides.

"Where have you been? I haven't seen you around at all this year," says someone in my college as I pass through the courtyard on my way home. "Did you move off campus?" The tone is always slightly accusatory. It's not that this person who lived in my entryway freshman year misses me. All of my actual friends know where and with whom I live, because they've been over for dinner. But I have other social obligations to this random guy. By choosing to move two blocks away, I'm rejecting the concept of the residential college, and thus casting aspersions on his own choices—to live in the college, to wear a lei at Hawaiian Night, to yell "We are Davenport, we are here, beer beer beer beer beer beer!"

"The residential college system is the foundation of Yale's social structure," reads Chapter One of The Yale, which is handed out at orientation each year. "The twelve residential colleges help foster a sense of community for their members, each creating a socially and intellectually vital environment on a relatively small scale." The extent to which this actually happens is a topic for another article. But it's important as a statement of intent. Most other schools, large and small, offer upperclassmen the chance to live in affinity groups of some kind—people who want to speak Russian or cook their own vegetarian food. My friend Emily had to write an essay to apply to the "artsy dorm" at Indiana University, where life includes free arthouse movie tickets.

At Yale that sort of self-selection would be unthinkable. It's their way or the highway, even if that means Swing Space, annexing, or other arrangements that neuter the original intent of the college system. And besides, Yale's housing does have a not-so-hidden theme—pampering. To live on campus is to be supported and surrounded by gardeners, cooks, cleaning people, maintenance people, and guards, never raking a leaf or washing a dish or paying an electricity bill. And all this for about $937 a month—$137 more than it costs me to live off campus, ample spending money included. I don't think cooking my own moussaka makes me a better person, necessarily. And even though I love my roommates, sometimes we get lonely for less familiar faces. But when I start an apartment search in the real world in a year and a half, I think I'll be glad that I haven't spent the last four years in a walled garden.

Anya Kamenetz is a junior in Davenport.

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