A new housing initiative has been presented to the Lasell community for the 2026-2027 school year. Next academic year, in a collaboration with residential life and the office of student activities and orientation, clubs will have the opportunity to live together in several of the Victorian-style houses on campus. This provides a community for the clubs to host events in their house, gain a close connection with members, and have ease in coordinating events.
The idea was proposed by the Associate Dean of Student Affairs, Charnele Luster, who has previously enacted similar housing at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, in a program called Living Learning Communities. She proposed the idea after noticing the high percentage of students involved in activities at Lasell and the distaste students have for being placed with unknown roommates during housing.
“We are able to marry these two ideas of students that are highly engaged and students that are saying I don’t want to live with people that I don’t know,” Luster explained. To Luster, the Victorian houses seemed the obvious choice for the placement of the new housing initiative.
A signup sheet for the housing program sent out to club executive boards named five living areas for potential club takeover; those spots included the Arnow Campus Center, and Victorian houses of Case, Chandler, Ordway, and Spence.
To live in these houses, organizations are being asked to host one program a month and designate a clubhouse coordinator, a student in the club who will attend meetings with the club’s advisor, the Student Activities Coordinator, and the Area Coordinator to receive all relevant information for living in the house and supporting club activities and events.
The clubs or organizations must be pre-existing and fully established to be eligible for a clubhouse placement. If a club does not have enough student interest to fill a whole house, they are allowed to join with another club to fill the rooms. Sports teams can not designate a house just for themselves due to an NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) rule that states on-campus residences must be at least 51 percent filled with non-athletes.
There is also a need for stronger ties to organizations and engagement on campus as students become comfortable at Lasell. The excitement of being a new student on an unfamiliar campus wears off, and students begin to detach from their community.
“Our first years feel highly connected to Lasell, and while that may look to be 70 percent of our students feel connected to the school, it becomes 45 percent as the seniors leave. That’s a huge drop in satisfaction, for the connection piece,” Director of Student Activities and Orientation, Amanda Knight, said on the need for community-building programs for all students, but specifically upperclassmen. Clubhouses would hopefully provide this boost of school spirit and community for the university.
There is no determined measure of success for this program at the moment. Regular check-ins were suggested by Luster, and Knight suggested giving the program a full year to determine its success. Students who may feel concerned about this new initiative were urged to give it a chance before completely deciding against it.
“Folks should really take the time to see what this is all about, see how it could impact them personally and their experience here at Lasell, and what that means as a community,” Knight suggested. “Change can be hard, but I’m a firm believer that you can’t grow without change.”
“We’re always as an institution looking for ways to be forward thinking, and this is truly no different,” Luster explained. “Ultimately, we want our students to find a housing option that is going to work best for them, and this is going to be a new, fun, and exciting way for our students to find their community.”
This new housing program hopes to give students a strong sense of belonging and community with other students.
–March 2, 2026–
