Transfer system set

By Katherine Hsu     10/8/09 7:00pm

Students should keep a close eye on their mailboxes in the coming weeks, as offers to transfer to the new residential colleges will soon be sent. Though Duncan College and McMurtry College opened their doors in August to a new freshman class, they are also housing members from Baker College and Will Rice College. Next fall, however, Baker and Will Rice will move back to their renovated colleges on the south side of campus, and Duncan and McMurtry will boast a new upperclassman population.

The emptied living quarters will be filled by randomly selected sophomores and juniors from the other nine colleges. This group, a representative distribution of gender, residential colleges and majors, will receive invitations sent by Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman and, according to Associate Dean of Undergraduates Matt Taylor, will represent "a cross-section of classes."

Taylor said a survey sent out last week from his office showed 58 percent of the 875 responses in favor of moving to either McMurtry or Duncan. Based on this data, he said he expects a total of roughly 300 students to transfer.

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"I'm optimistic that people are excited about being part of the new colleges," Taylor said.

Invitations will be placed in the recipients' mailboxes next Friday, and students will have until Oct. 31 to decide whether to accept or decline the offer to transfer. While the selected students do not have the choice of deciding which college they will transfer into, those invited will be able to bring between one and four friends, with the individual's allowed number stated in the letter.

"From the very beginning, we have engaged students all along the way and seen them become excited about being part of the conversation concerning the new colleges," Taylor said. "We are giving students the chance to work with the original freshman classes of Duncan and McMurtry to create a college from scratch, including selecting masters and RAs, writing a constitution and establishing traditions."

As further incentive, Duncan and McMurtry will host events from next Friday to Oct. 31 to woo the invited upperclassmen and further convince them to transfer. Although details of the events remain secret, a McMurtry Orientation Week coordinator, Aaron Varnell, confirmed the events will include tours of the colleges and rooms and mixers for the current freshmen and invited upperclassmen.

Without an O-Week and populated entirely by applicants selected by a founding committee, Martel's process had no safeguards to prevent imbalances in class structure, Taylor said. The college's masters and colors had also been selected before the residents moved in, and the constitution had been written, he said.

However, Duncan and McMurtry have already managed to form a community in the absence of a pre-existing college structure, Varnell said. They have developed unique cheers and initiated traditions such as McMurtry's body-paint ambush of Sid Richardson College and Duncan's "Deep Thought Tuesday."

Freshmen from both colleges will meet early next semester with the transferring upperclassmen to collaborate on establishing a constitution, colors and crest. Presently, Duncan and McMurtry freshmen are forming committees to select possible masters.

"Since spring semester, the O-Week coordinators, ambassadors, advisers, RAs, masters and Baker and Will Rice government have been working hard to prevent 'another Martel,'" Varnell, a Will Rice junior, said. "The process of creating and populating Duncan and McMurtry has been much more organic. The two colleges' identities will form from the randomly selected upperclassmen working with the freshmen to create something new, different and undeniably epic."

To facilitate the process of creating unique identities for both new colleges, Forman's office will host an informational session about the transfer process Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. in Herring 100.

"The dean's office is extremely excited to start the process of populating Duncan and McMurtry," Taylor said. "I can see from the uniformly positive way students have talked about the new colleges that this is going to be a historic event.

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