Colleges Would Rather Freshmen Not Choose Their Roommates

In 1926, the University of Wisconsin published a brochure advertising its new men’s dormitories. “Here … the man from the well-to-do home and the man who tends furnaces to buy his text-books will learn respect for each other across a common table,” the booklet read, “and the son of banker and farmer will find mutual understanding, of a winter’s evening, in give and take to the crackling of logs in a wide fireplace.”

The brochure reflected evolving attitudes toward college-student housing at the time. College deans had begun to worry that fraternities, which rose in popularity toward the end of the 1800s, were undermining the student experience, according to Carla Yanni, a professor of art history at Rutgers University and the author of the new book . They were full of affluent white students, while many poorer students lived in off-campus boarding houses. Greek life was effectively promoting socioeconomic and ethnic segregation. Dorms, in