Dr. Price Discusses the Freshman Housing Challenge

The Chapman Visiting Scholars Series on Saturday, October 17, was led by Chapman University Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, Dr. Jerry Price. The presentation, labeled “The Freshman Housing Challenge,” aimed to introduce NAC scholars to the underlying issue of pairing students based on personality and interests on the Chapman University campus as well as worldwide.

To open the lecture, Dr. Price had the students answer a survey with a series of questions about their living habits and interests in and outside the school setting. After the students finished the survey, he asked the students to get up from their chairs and move to the front of the room to share their answers through an answer-based activity that had students with similar responses on the left, middle, or right side of the room.

In one of the questions, Dr. Price asked, “If you like country [music] move to the right side of the room; if you don’t, move to the left.” The Southern California lifestyle soon came to light when all participants decided to move to the left side of the room, showing they weren’t interested in the country music genre. He then asked if they liked “Hip-Hop” and the playing board suddenly became even, with some students in the middle of the room, showing neutrality over that particular genre.

When the activity ended, he asked the students to analyze the purpose of the exercise, and one student answered, “to better match the candidates and avoid conflict between the new roommates”.

For the second half of the presentation, Dr. Price formed groups of 4-5 students and had them pair fictional characters together based on their interests. The students had 15-20 minutes to pair the characters based on their profile and then had to share their answers with the rest of the room. One of the answers shared was “Stuart is going to be busy playing video games and drawing, and Jerry (fictional character) is going to be busy doing sports minding his own business, which is why they would be good roommates.”

Dr. Price closed the lecture by saying, “Having conflicts with someone else and learning how to make the situation win-win for everybody is a skill that is invaluable for the rest of your life.”