House system at the California Institute of Technology


The house system is the basis of undergraduate student residence at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech's unique house system is modeled after the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge in England, although the houses are probably more similar in size and character to the Yale University residential colleges and Harvard University house system. Like a residential college, a house embodies two closely connected concepts: it serves as both a physical building where a majority of its members reside and as the center of social activity for its members. Houses also serve as part of the student government system, each house having rules for its own self-government and also serving as constituencies for committees of the campus-wide student governments, the Associated Students of the California Institute of Technology, incorporated and the Interhouse Committee.
The houses resemble fraternities at other American universities in the shared loyalties they engender. Unlike in fraternities, however, potentially dangerous "rushing" or "pledging" is replaced with two weeks of "Rotation" at the beginning of a student's freshman year, and students generally remain affiliated with one house for the duration of their undergraduate studies.
Freshmen have historically gone through a process known as Rotation for a week before term through the first week of classes, leading to their eventual house assignment by way of a matching process. This process has rules associated with it to try to give freshmen a chance to choose among the houses in an unbiased way.

History

Caltech established the house system in 1931, disbanding the existing fraternities and recasting them as Blacker House, Dabney House, Fleming House and Ricketts House, located in the complex known as the student houses, then old houses, and later south houses. The fraternities were as follows:
  • Blacker: Phi Alpha Rho, also known as Pharo
  • Dabney: Gamma Sigma
  • Fleming: Sigma Alpha Pi and Pi Alpha Tau
  • Ricketts: Kappa Gamma, also known as Gnome
Expanding student population was accommodated in 1960 with the new houses, or north houses: Lloyd House, 'Page House, and Ruddock House .'
A new state-of-the-art residential facility named Avery House, was opened in 1996, touted as a facility that allowed undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty to not only mingle, but live together. As a result, Avery was not initially considered part of the house system, and freshmen were not allowed to live there. In the 2003-2004 school year, the Avery Council campaigned for Avery to participate in Rotation and take freshmen. This change was opposed by the Caltech undergraduate student body by a five-to-one margin, but the Faculty Board voted overwhelmingly to approve the change. Beginning in the 2005-2006 school year, freshmen began to rotate into Avery, changing its status to a fully represented house.
Also in 2005, work began on a major renovation project for the aging south houses, whose residents were relocated to a temporary modular housing complex. The renovations were completed at the beginning of the 2007 calendar year. Students moved back into the south houses on 15 December 2006, though construction continued through the beginning of 2007.
Like most of the older buildings on campus, Avery House and the south houses are in California Mission style, and resemble cloistered monasteries with enclosed courtyards; the north houses are of Modern design.

House memberships

There are two ways to gain membership in a house: rotate in at the beginning of one's freshman year and become a full member, or become a social or full member afterwards. Procedures for admitting new members vary depending upon house bylaws and type of membership.

Rotation

Rotation is the process by which incoming freshmen choose the house they will be affiliated with. In Caltech parlance, freshmen are called "frosh" and are referred to as "prefrosh" until the revelation of their house affiliation at the end of rotation. Upon first arriving at Caltech, the incoming freshmen are given a random room assignment in a random house that is different from their Prefrosh Weekend assignment, and then spend a week eating mainly dinner and dessert in all of the houses, getting an opportunity to meet people in all of the houses.
These meals and meetings are an opportunity both for the prefrosh to get to know the feel of the different houses and for the upperclassmen to meet and form opinions on the prefrosh so both can see where they might belong. Many houses also show house-made videos to the prefrosh, which yield the prefrosh additional information about the various personalities of the houses. At the end of this week, the frosh rate each of the eight houses in order of preference. Based on this, and the opinions of the houses' existing members, the prefrosh are placed into a house which will be their home physically and socially for the next few years. The Interhouse Committee attempts to ensure a certain level of secrecy regarding the exact process, so that the confidentiality of both the freshmen and those involved with their final housing assignments is maintained. Also, the selection process is constrained: there are only a limited number of openings in each house, and it is impossible to simultaneously meet the preferences of all of the freshmen and houses.
Despite the constraints, this two-way selection process of joining a house, and social interaction after joining, gives each house a distinctive personality that is stable over decades.

Later membership

There is a second way to obtain membership in a house: to apply at some point after rotation. The process varies from house to house, but in general one makes an announcement at dinner to the effect of "I would like to be a member of ___ House," and the House conducts a vote. All houses except Ricketts have two tiers of memberships: full members and social members.
Anyone who rotates into a house is automatically a full member; individuals who would like to become members afterward can choose between full and social membership. The relative difficulties in attaining full and social memberships differ from house to house, as do the relative privileges that each membership type affords. The only universal truths are that full membership is harder to attain than social and that full members may live in house-associated property while social members may not. Generally speaking, social members are able to attend all house social events.

List of the houses

South houses

The south house complex opened in 1931. The South houses sometimes style themselves as "hovses," in the Latin tradition of using the letters "v" and "u" interchangeably, as the names on the buildings are written using the letter "v".

Blacker House

Blacker House was built with the help of funds donated by Robert Roe Blacker, a trustee of Caltech. Members of Blacker House are referred to as Moles.
One of the traditions of Blacker House is the hellride. In a defiant response to the prohibition against playing Ride of the Valkyries, the freshmen living in a part of the house named Hell would announce a hellride. They then barricade the hallway and play the "Ride" at high volume, daring the upperclassmen to break in and drag everyone to be drenched in the showers.
Blacker House features halls painted as Heaven and Hell, as well as a small lounge and kitchenette in between them known as Purgatory. Blacker's courtyard formerly featured a habitable treehouse and a giant tire swing, but the tree that bore them was cut down during renovations of the house in the 2005–2006 academic year. Attached to another tree was another wooden swing, but that was cut down in 2019. In another side of the courtyard is a couch swing.
File:Blacker Hovse slogan on Mars.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The Blacker House slogan γδβγ mysteriously appears on a camera calibration target on NASA's Curiosity rover. If anyone at the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory knows how it got there, they aren't telling The letters of Blacker House are γδβγ. The story is that in 1978 or 1979, it was popular for Blacker students to climb on top of elevators and ride them. One time, security went inside the elevator looking for the students, who were on top of the elevator. The security muttered, "God damn Blacker gang", and the phrase stuck. Blacker students began signing GDBG or γδβγ on all their pranks. Blacker has also been referred to as the house of fucking geniuses and the inscription HOFG can be found throughout the tunnels along with γδβγ. In the 1960s the house slogan was "Blacker House for gracious living" which became "the house of gracious living" by the 1990s.
Notable alumni include: