BY ISAAC SORKIN and HENRY SWIFT

In print | April 19, 2007

The housing lottery is mere days away. How do Swatties decide what dorm to live in? There are clear trade-offs: Palmer is far from campus but has large rooms. New Dorm is air-conditioned, but also sort of far away. Parrish is close but has single-sex halls. However, it is the interaction of sociability preferences with dorm desirability that largely determines choices. This also provides an explanation for persistent dorm cultures.

By sociability, we mean the ability or desire to make friends with many people of different sorts and not the number of friends you have. There is a continuum of sociability: on one end are “extroverts,” who want to get to know as many people as possible. At the other extreme are “introverts,” like the authors of this column, who only occasionally venture outside their close circle of friends.

Introverts care far more about living with people they already know because they do not easily make new friends. However, it is not possible to live with friends in just any dorm. If blocks don’t come through, the housing lottery must be used to place close-knit social groups together. The most popular dorms are not the best choices for these sorts of endeavors because they might fill up before all members of the friendship group have picked in. If a group of introverts wants guaranteed proximity, they must choose a less-desirable dorm. Thus, less desirable dorms will have more introverts.

On the other hand, social butterflies have an entirely different utility function. Whereas the introvert is willing to sacrifice physical comfort and aesthetic environs for the ability to live near comrades-in-arms, the extrovert is willing to substitute between the two because she knows that she will be able to and want to participate in the social life of whatever dorm she ends up in. So extroverts pick into the nicest rooms possible, while introverts pick into poorer rooms to avoid the risk of not living with their friends. Thus, desirable dorms will have more extroverts.

This does not imply that introverts are more risk-averse than extroverts, as some might claim. In fact, all it implies is that introverts bear a higher cost of being around strangers than extroverts. With the exact same risk preferences, introverts will make choices to avoid meeting new people because of the higher costs that it imposes on them than on extroverts.

At the extremes, this offers an explanation for why dorm cultures persist across class years. Wharton (CD in particular) is loud and party-prone every year precisely because it is the nicest living space: It is attractive and close to campus. So all the extroverts pick in independently of their friends and make friends with whoever else picked in because they are also extroverts. On the other hand, Mary Lyons attracts introverts who want to maximize the chance of living with people they know. Say what you will about ML’s breakfast room, labyrinthian interior and large rooms; the walk from campus gives it a major disadvantage in the housing lottery. And this is precisely why it attracts people who want to live with friends: introverts know that their friends will also be able to pick in because no one else wants to live in ML.

This analysis means that the blocking option should be expanded. For the first time this year, students will be able to apply for as many as six blocks. This is certainly an improvement. However, the number of blocks should be expanded as well, especially in desirable dorms. The lottery benefits extroverts because they care solely about the quality of the dorm and harms introverts who find themselves picking into lower-quality dorms because the cost of living alone is high. This inequity contradicts the lengths to which the college has gone to make the housing system coextensive with its Quaker roots. The continued expansion of the blocking system is the easiest way to cure this ill.

Isaac and Henry are seniors. You can reach them at isorkin1 [at] swarthmore [dot] edu and hswift1 [at] swarthmore [dot] edu.

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