Remember when you were an incoming freshman deciding where you wanted to live your first year? Well, that time is almost here for the ProFros-turned-FoShoFros you saw wandering around campus just a few weeks ago.

A central question to consider when making housing decisions is: four-class or all-frosh? Each has a distinct atmosphere, and students must assess which suits them best. There are upsides and downsides to both options. The upperclassmen in four-class dorms, for instance, provide a natural network of “pseudo-mentors” for freshmen, in the words of Phillip Arredondo ‘10.

Arredondo, who lived in Roble his freshman year, strongly believes that freshmen benefit greatly from the four-class residential experience.

“Freshman year is a crucible of sorts,” Arredondo said. “Let’s just say there are a lot of mistakes to be made, and taking advice from various upperclassmen was definitely a way to avoid lots of those mistakes. Sure, there are peer-mentoring programs, but I think it’s better when it’s more casual.”

“And it’s a big misconception that the upperclassmen are just going to stick to themselves,” he added. “In reality, they’re just all part of the family.”

In fact, despite having initially ranked an all-frosh dorm as his first choice, Arredondo said that he was “so, so happy that that didn’t come true.”

“I was under the impression that living with all freshmen would make it easier, but that was just because I was naive,” he said. “It could be argued that living in an all-frosh dorm, you gain a sense of Stanford pride and freshman craziness. And while maybe that didn’t hit us as strongly in a four-class dorm, I still think there’s a naivete that comes with that mob mentality. Plus, freshman dorms usually get very clique-y.”

Stephanie Otani ‘11 — who lives in Junipero, an all-frosh dorm — agreed.

“I love J-Ro, but the cliques are so bad,” she said. “That’s so freshman-dorm. Sometimes I feel like I’m still in high school.”

When asked whether the all-freshman dorm experience has lived up to her expectations in general, Otani had mixed feelings.

“I wanted to get to know people in my class, and I heard that all-frosh dorms are really tight communities,” she said. “I have made a lot of good friends that I could relate to because we’re going through the same freshman experience, but — and I feel like this is kind of difficult for me to articulate — the practical side of the living experience has been a lot more complicated and difficult.”

“I think because freshmen are new to this college setting, they’re testing the waters, and they haven’t found a balance in their lifestyles with regard to partying,” she added.

According to Branner Resident Fellow (RF) Nancy Buffington, however, an all-frosh dorm can be the perfect setting for finding this balance.

“An all-frosh dorm tends to have more staff support, more programming and generally more going on,” she wrote in an email to The Daily. “Students interact more with each other.”

Perhaps it is Buffington’s image of all-frosh dorms that has led a majority of incoming freshmen in recent years to rank these first on their preference forms.

“Most students I talk to enjoy and value that freshman experience,” she added.

However, there isn’t enough all-frosh housing to accommodate all incoming freshmen who are likely to prefer it, according to Vice Provost John Bravman.

“In a given year, we might be short about 200 students who wanted all-freshman housing but couldn’t get it,” Bravman said.

This shortage led in part to a housing overhaul plan brought to the table in 2005. Among other goals, the plan sought to increase the availability of all-frosh housing and to “un-stuff” the campus in general — meaning that, for example, current triples would be converted back to doubles, and dorm seminar rooms and study spaces would be reinstated.

Striving toward these goals would mean the conversion of more dorms in Wilbur and Stern Halls, for instance, to all-frosh housing and that of Branner, Toyon and Lagunita Court to upper-class housing. The original plan was revised to keep Roble four-class.

Buffington expressed regret about the proposed changes, particularly in relation to Branner. “Branner has been an all-frosh dorm for decades, and I’ll be sad when this long tradition ends,” she said. “But I do understand some of the reasons for the planned change.”

After all, it is not the first time that longstanding customs have faced transformation. The press release that Bravman sent to The Daily in February 2005 noted: “Branner Hall, for instance, was for decades a four-class women’s dormitory, and Wilbur Hall opened as a men’s dormitory. Change is hard. It is in and of itself neither good nor bad.”

Thus far, the most immediate, visible change on the housing scene will be the conversion of Crothers, which currently houses graduate students, to upper-class housing, which will create 350 new beds for undergraduates

“We hope to be in there by fall of ‘09,” Bravman said.

If and when the housing plan goes through in its entirety, “We’d be erring on the other side rather than the side we’re erring on now,” Bravman explained. “We might end up with a somewhat smaller number of students who want four-class and who we can’t accommodate, rather than the larger number of students wanting all-frosh housing who we currently can’t accommodate.”

So, how far have we progressed in terms of the rest of the plan?

“Nowhere,” Bravman said. “It’s years away, if ever. This is all in the big idea stage — we’re well removed from the small detail stage. It’s just a talking point for those of us who are thinking about it — there are no decisions here at all.”

The largest obstacle has been fundraising.

“We have to assess whether or not we can actually do this,” Bravman said. “This could easily amount to a billion dollars, which is a lot of money. There just isn’t the capacity right now.”

This news would please Arredondo.

“I think it’s foolish,” he said of the plan.

Indeed, both Buffington and Bravman do agree that all-frosh housing is not a good fit for all students.

“For some, the liveliness of an all-frosh dorm can be overwhelming,” Buffington wrote.

Bravman is on the same page.

“I have no doubt that four-class housing is the right option for some students,” he said. “[The plan] was not to eliminate four-class housing; it was to do a better job of meeting the demand,” Bravman explained. “It was definitely a reduction in the number of four-class beds, but not an elimination. It’s not an emphasis on an all-freshman campus — I don’t want to do that, and we don’t have the space for that anyway.”

Nonetheless, he still hopes that the plan will progress, for reasons based on both initial demand and other data.

“We have done some surveying, and students in freshman dorms reported greatest satisfaction and also a slightly higher GPA,” he said. “That doesn’t prove causation by any means, but there is a suggested correlation.”

Despite such data, some students do not believe that student satisfaction with first-year housing has been accurately assessed.

“An exit poll would reveal a striking number of kids who feel differently from their original choices,” Arredondo said.

Bravman says that the administration has reached out, but students have not been as responsive as hoped. The senior survey response rate, for example, is at 30 percent.

“We have a difficult time getting student opinions,” he said. “Students say that we don’t ask for their opinions, and when we ask, they don’t express their voice. It’s sort of the squeaky wheel syndrome. We try to be responsive, but we end up responding to small groups of students or not responding at all because we don’t get their feedback.”

Regardless, Bravman noted plans to make further efforts to garner students’ opinions.

“We are going to take more deliberate steps with the incoming class this fall to get responses from them,” he said. “I don’t know if it will have the desired effect, but we just have to do better. ‘We’ meaning everybody — both students and staff.”

Meanwhile, when asked facetiously about which type of freshman housing he personally would rank first, Bravman — who “had a great time in Arroyo,” which was all-frosh his freshman year — said with a wry smile and a hint of a wink, “FroSoCo, of course. You’re asking the wrong person.”