A common way to entice talented students to come to a university is to offer them an honors program, and with that several benefits. In the case of the University, which calls its honors college students Echols Scholars (other honors groups exist as well, such as Rodman Scholars for the Engineering School), such benefits include early class registration, no core requirements and a first-year, honors-only living community. While taken together these benefits may prove to be a good admissions strategy, the existence of an honors-only dorm can have negative effects on all University students.
The most concerning effect is on the scholars themselves. The competitive nature of our school has been noted many times over, but within Balz-Dobie (currently the honors dorm) pressure can be heightened and ultimately create so stressful an atmosphere that students’ mental health suffers. Caroline Herre, a third-year student who lived in Balz-Dobie as a first-year and subsequently as a resident advisor in her second-year, saw these effects firsthand. (Herre stressed that she was not speaking from the perspective of Housing and Residence Life, but rather from the perspective of an observer of this issue.)
According to Herre, “Competition is something that is incredibly real in Balz-Dobie.” She points to this competition as a factor in increasing students’ anxiety and even the risk of issues like eating disorders. She notes, “A lot of students I would talk to would say, ‘I have a conversation every day that makes me feel inadequate, because I’m not doing as much as my roommate or my hall mates.’” This comparative tendency contributes, in part, to what Herre saw as a higher proportion of anxious students in that dorm.
Michael Timko, director of the Echols Scholars program, disagrees with this point. “I think people going to college always are anxious. There’s no difference between what goes on in the Echols dorm as opposed to what goes on in the dorm next door,” he says. “I think students in their first semester of first year are always anxious about where they fit socially or among their peers.”
But this, of course, is not the only issue an honors-only dorm presents. While the goal of the dorm is, according to Timko, to give first-year honors students the chance to live with like-minded people, this can also funnel students into the same extracurricular activities despite whatever independent interests they may have. The prestige of mainstream University clubs contributes to the competition students feel, and in an environment in which, according to Herre, “people are so focused on the same organizations,” such a focus can “prohibit them from joining ones outside of those [CIOs]... because the very well-connected students in Balz-Dobie are involved in those and it prevents them from exploring where their interests may actually lie.”
In addition to negative effects on the scholars themselves, the honors-only dorm segregates University students outside of dorm life because of perceived differences between peers. Separating honors students from their peers can foster a culture of elitism that prevents students from different levels of achievement from interacting with one another.
“I think it does create this sort of us-them mentality by separating Echols Scholars,” Herre explains. Of course, this is not because Echols Scholars themselves are elitist; it is because when they are clustered together in one space and, as a result, mostly interact with each other, a perception can arise that these high-achieving students only wish to interact with other high-achieving students. The fact that they are clustered together also makes it easier to know who is an Echols Scholar, since students’ first-year dorms are one of the first questions students ask one another upon meeting.
Timko notes that this perception of elitism is created by non-Echols students. “I think, if anything, it’s the other students saying, well they get this kind of treatment and so they must be elitist.” But regardless of whether or not the honors students propagate it themselves, that sense of elitism is still present. This can only serve to damage students, by creating high expectations for Echols scholars themselves and affecting non-Echols students’ attitudes about their own success. This, of course, is entirely unnecessary. As Herre says, “I don’t believe there should be any separation… I think you can have intellectual conversations in any dorm, in any setting… anywhere when you’re around University of Virginia students, they’re of a high caliber.”
These problems ask the question: why do 85 percent of entering Echols Scholars opt to live in the Echols dorm? And why do alumni, as Timko argues, overwhelmingly support the existence of that dorm?
As to the first question, entering students probably do not have these larger problems in mind. And for the second, University students in general love their first-year dorms, since these residences are often where students make lasting friends. Students may not be forced to truly think critically when reflecting on those experiences.
Timko does concede, “If we found that the residential experience didn’t serve our purpose, we would certainly reevaluate that.” Perhaps the Echols program should reevaluate this set-up, by distributing surveys and meeting with current resident advisors to discuss whether a change should be made. If students truly do enjoy their experience in large numbers, then perhaps the next step would be to find ways to better integrate the honors community as a whole into the larger University community.
Dani Bernstein is a Senior Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at d.bernstein@cavalierdaily.com.
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