By Michael Kelley ’14

Photo by Nicole Maselli ’14/ The Lafayette

Beginning next fall, all first-year wellness students will be housed together in Kamine Hall.

Each year, roughly 90 incoming freshmen request wellness, according to Director of Residence Life Grace Reynolds. Kamineholds 90 residents and thus will become an all-wellness dormitory.

“Over the past few years, we have not met the demands of the incoming first year class for wellness spaces,” Reynolds said. “We’re looking to put everyone together to better support the program.

“It’s just more efficient and makes more sense to do it that way,” she said.

Some freshmen who did not choose wellness still wind up living in wellness housing, leading to confusion as to why there was trouble meeting demands.

But Reynolds explained why this is so.

“While there are times that students who didn’t themselves request wellness have been assigned to those floors, usually it is because their requested roommate who had an earlier deposit date did,” Reynolds said. “We assume specific roommate preference super-cedes all other requests and living preferences.”

Other instances occur when a space opens up later in the assignment cycle when Residence Life is only placing students with late deposit dates.

Of the first-year students who live on a wellness floor this year, 93 percent had indicated wellness as a preference. The remaining 7 percent had a roommate preference or a late assignment. The year prior, 100 percent of the freshmen assigned to wellness had listed that preference.

Conway House, Keefe Hall, and the first floor of Watson Hall have held freshmen wellness students in past years.

Upper-classmen wellness students will continue to reside in Keefe.

Megan Tuttle ‘16 currently resides in Kamine and after hearing about the change, thinks it could be a success.

“It’s probably a good idea because Kamine is pretty far away from everything. It’s pretty secluded,” Tuttle said.

Wellness housing at Lafayette revolves around six dimensions: emotional, occupational, social, intellectual, spiritual and physical.

The Residence Life website overviews wellness housing with the following: “Residence Hall staff in this area sponsor programs focused around spiritual, emotional, physical and mental well being.  Members commit to maintaining a substance-free lifestyle and living environment?”

Reynolds elaborated. “The concept is really that, as a human being, to be well, we need to attend to the various dimensions of our lives. We cannot just be thinking about how we’re doing physically, we need to attend emotionally. Are our relationships healthy? How are we doing spiritually? Are we approaching them in a way that helps us to be the most well.”

Wellness students will now have the opportunity to discuss those answers surrounded by a supportive community.