The University impresses upon prospective students the potential impact of living-learning communities on the undergraduate experience: Learning in small residential environments with diverse bodies of students and engaging with instructors on a more personal level. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The Lloyd Hall Scholars Program, the University's oldest living-learning environment, has failed to achieve its lofty ideals.

The University's management of LHSP has demonstrated its lack of concern for the quality of its living-learning programs. LHSP's Resident Fellows, instructors who teach and live inside the building will be discontinued by the University at the end of the winter semester. Citing budgetary concerns and the desire to standardize compostion classes with the Sweetland Writing Center, the University ended what was perhaps LHSP's most valuable feature.

Eliminating the LHSP's Resident Fellows contradicts one of the primary aims of last year's Report of the President's Commision on the Undergraduate Experience, which reccommended that some faculty live in the residence halls alongside students. LHSP was the only program on campus that put students and teachers in such close proximity.

LSA has decided to eliminate Resident Fellow positions, calling into question its commitment to living-learning communities and undergraduate education in general.

Since its inception in 1962, LHSP has maintained a healthy level of enrollment which has not always been directly related to its offerings. Originally aimed at improving the writing abilities of underclassmen and engaging them in community involvement, LHSP's mission today is ill-defined and often selected for its location on campus.

LHSP attracts a body of students with similar racial, cultural, geographical and socio-economic backgrounds. Meanwhile, students who thought they would be getting an execellent living-learning program regardless of its location on campus, are disappointed by the shallow offerings and homogeneoeous student body.

Before recruiting new students, LHSP should define its goals, purpose and identity. The University also needs to be willing to spend money and resources to invigorate the LHSP. Its removal of the Resident Fellows is counter-productive to the University's larger push to promote living-learning environments and foster an identity for the LHSP. With its last distinguishing characteristics being eroded by the University, it is no wonder that many students view LHSP's biggest asset as its location. Instead of erecting Potemkin villages to impress prospective students, the University should take real steps to ensure that living-learning programs like LHSP are what they pretend to be.