ResX Neighborhoods and Housing Assignments

Dear students,

We are writing today to share updates on ResX.

In February, we announced that we’re taking the next steps in launching the ResX initiative for fall 2021. Since then, we’ve been working with our teams in Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE), Residential Education (ResEd) and our student and alumni advisory boards to begin implementing these steps with the goal of providing students long-term continuity and community in their Stanford experience. We have updated the ResX website, including the FAQ. Here are highlights.

Neighborhoods

As our president and provost shared in February, it is our most sincere hope that “our new neighborhoods will be your Stanford homes — they’ll be where late-night conversations turn into lifelong friendships, and where you’ll create and continue traditions that become cherished across generations of students.”

And now, we’ve got neighborhoods! Check them out on our website.

In consultation with students, we worked to prioritize:

• More all-frosh housing, and all-frosh housing in every neighborhood.
• All-sophomore housing in every neighborhood for the 2021-2022 academic year.
• Ensuring every neighborhood meets a broad spectrum of disability accommodation needs.
• Ensuring students can move from RF houses to a more independent style of living.
• Ensuring every neighborhood includes Row houses and apartment-style living.

We’ve been talking with students about how to name our neighborhoods.  There have been a lot of great ideas including things like naming the neighborhoods after trees, elements and colors. We want to take some time to work with our community to find the right long-term names. We’d love to hear your ideas! Please share them here. Until then, we will be going with the most traditional of names, S-T-A-N-F-O-R-D. Each neighborhood will be one of the letters of the Stanford name (Neighborhood S, Neighborhood T and so on). This temporary approach reinforces how each neighborhood will be an integral part of our community as a whole.

Assignment process

Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) will begin the neighborhood assignment process. This will be a three-step process:

• Step 1: Rank your neighborhood preferences starting April 9, 2021. All upperclass students will have the opportunity to rank their neighborhood preferences as individuals or in groups of up to eight people. This will be your home for the remainder of your time at Stanford.We know many of you haven’t yet had the opportunity to connect with each other. It is absolutely okay to pick a neighborhood solo! We expect that lots of you will be doing this, and there will be many opportunities to connect with your new neighbors once you get to campus this fall. You will receive an email with information about your choices and instructions to apply on April 9.
• Step 2: Rank neighborhood housing choices and apply to live in a University Theme House, starting June 2021. You will be able to rank your housing choices within your neighborhood and apply to live in a UTH. Want to know more about University Theme Houses? Look here!
• Step 3: Pick a room, starting early August 2021. You will be able to pick a room in your house. If you are solo and looking for a roommate, you have a couple of options:  (1) We will be working with the class presidents to help answer your questions about ResX, and they will host some opportunities to help you find people that you would like to live with next year. More information is coming soon. (2) We also know that many rising sophomores want the Stanford experience of being purposefully matched with a roommate as we traditionally do with our first-year students. We are working on an optional process to match rising sophomores. More information is coming soon.

Dining

Many of you have questions about how dining will work in the neighborhood system. Here are some answers:

• Students on a dining hall meal plan will be able to use their meal plan in any dining hall, regardless of their neighborhood assignments.
• Students will be paying the same meal plan cost, whether they live in an RF house with a dining hall, Row self-op house or the Suites. This will be a substantial reduction in meal plan costs for the Row self-op or Suites plans in comparison to previous years.
• Students living in a Row house, Suite or co-op will be able to use up to five meal swipes per week and five guest meals per quarter in a dining hall. You’ll be able to eat with friends across the neighborhoods.
• Students in co-ops will continue to pay less for a meal plan in exchange for sharing in the work of operating the house. In addition, co-op living will include dining hall meal swipes and guest meals. This means co-op residents will be able to eat with friends across the neighborhoods, participate in special neighborhood dining hall dinners, or stop by a dining hall when it is convenient to do so.

More to look forward to this fall

As we get ready for fall, we are committed to working with students to create opportunities for community and connection on campus. Here’s where you can learn more.

And as we continue to work our way through the implementation of ResX, we’d love to hear from you. Please share any thoughts and feedback here. Also, if you’d like to request a meeting, please click here. If you’d like to see what we are working on next, check out our current projects.

We look forward to building these new communities with you!

Sincerely,

Susie Brubaker-Cole
Vice Provost for Student Affairs

Sarah Church
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Tim Warner
Vice Provost for Budgets and Auxiliaries Management