The crowded hustle of life in the undergraduate dorms renewed for another year last weekend with an array of blue and gold balloons and welcome events. Just off campus, residents of the graduate student housing will now also be able to be included in the excitement of housing events.
This year, the Office of Residential Life hired students to live in and organize programming for each of the six centers of graduate student housing, said Jack Gibbons, director of residential education for ORL.
Graduate housing communities are located around West Los Angeles, including Weyburn Terrace, Hilgard Houses, University Village Apartments, Rose Avenue Apartments, Keystone Mentone Apartments and Venice Barry Apartments.
Rajelin Escondo, a first-year education graduate student, is the new community assistant for the roughly 1,200 residents of Weyburn Terrace.
She said she is eager to break down the silence housing complex and encourage neighbors to interact with each other.
It is easy for graduate students to get lost in their studies to feel isolated and disconnected, Gibbons said.
The new program is intended to cultivate a stronger sense of community and organize group events, something that has previously been lacking in graduate housing, he added.
With the new program, ORL leaders want to design a community of grad students that would be academically supportive, scholarly and engaging, Gibbons said.
Each community has varying types of residents, from families to international students.
ORL leaders have noticed over the years that the needs of graduate students in university housing are not being met, Gibbons said.
Parents, for example, typically request more family-friendly activities, and international students request events to help them adjust to their new home. Students have also expressed an interest in getting to know each other, he added.
Andy Hsieh, a second-year computer science graduate student who currently lives in the Keystone Mentone Apartments, is looking forward to the added sense of community for graduate students and international students specifically.
Hsieh moved to Los Angeles from Taiwan more than a year ago to attend UCLA.
Since then, he said he has relied on the Dashew Center for International Students and Scholars to help him connect with fellow students from other countries.
He hopes events incorporated put on by graduate housing will make it easier for him to form lasting friendships, he said.
Based on these requests, ORL plans to open a new building designated for programming events in November, in addition to the new staff hires, Gibbons said.
The addition of community assistants in graduate student housing is a process almost a decade in the making, Gibbons said. Housing administrators began planning for additional single graduate student housing ““ now known as Weyburn Terrace ““ in 2003. The community assistant program was initially part of the plan, Gibbons said.
But the plans were put on hold because it would be too expensive to build a new multipurpose center at the time, he said.
Recently, ORL decided to reinstate plans for the new building after re-evaluating the cost of reconstruction, which Gibbons said is expected to be lower than what it would have been before.
With events like supper clubs, dodgeball teams and coffee hours, Escondo said she wants to motivate graduate students locked in their routine of studying to come out of their apartments and form friendships with their neighbors.
“I want to give people a reason to say “˜hi’ to their neighbors,” she said.
As a former Weyburn resident, I think this is great news. There were a lot of grassroots efforts to build community there – recall the Weyburn Terrace Social Club FB group in the mid 2000s as an example – but I remember bringing up the need for programming staff years ago when I sat on the residents association board (for like 2 months). I’m ecstatic to hear this is finally happening. It seemed the only time I saw my neighbors regularly were during night time fire alarms.