From the hipsters to the partiers, every residence hall on campus has its reputation.
IU Residence Hall Association president and senior Lexie Heinemann said these commonly circulating stereotypes shouldn’t be taken at face value.
“There are stereotypes for each neighborhood that are perpetuated by the students,” Heinemann said. “The residence halls provide the framework to create a culture. If you come in thinking it has to be a certain way, you’re going to keep creating it to be that way.”
While Heinemann admitted that location and subject-based Living Learning Communities are influential factors in the types of students living in certain dorms, she said she doesn’t believe every word-of-mouth stereotype floating around is true.
So what are different generalizations on campus? Most students break them down by neighborhood.
Northwest:
Most people point to Northwest as the “party” neighborhood. Close to the stadium for fall tailgating, many students perceive Northwest to be the epicenter of freshmen social life on campus.
Despite hearing McNutt Residence Hall’s nickname “McSlut” before move-in, freshman McNutt resident Rianna Eduljee said she thinks a variety of people live in the quad, not just what is rumored to be mostly partiers. She and friend freshman Matt Brady live in McNutt’s Kelley Living Learning Community and said their floor in the LLC is often quieter than others in the quad.
Brady said he chose the residence hall because of its proximity to the Kelley School of Business and many other business students call it home.
Also in the Northwest neighborhood, distanced from the three other residence halls in the neighborhood clustered along Fee Lane, is Collins Living Learning Center, where it is rumored that mostly “hipsters” live.
“I think hipster is a weird term to describe people in here because usually the people here are just excited about what they do,” Collins resident Rachel Leak said. “It’s not like they have any pretention about it.”
With beautiful paintings and murals throughout the quad, Leak added, “there’s not a place in Collins that isn’t good for drinking coffee in.”
Southeast:
Southeast neighborhood typically carries the reputation of housing mostly music students.
Junior Grayson Mento, a third-year resident in Read Residence Center, said that was a major factor when deciding to return to Read each year.
“Everything is functional,” Mento said. “It’s ugly, but it’s functional. Everything works. If you’re high maintenance I guess that’s a problem. But the washing machines work, the showers work, so I like it.”
Central:
Located closest to Wells Library and the new Global and International Studies Building, the Central neighborhood varies in its reputation.
Sam Clark, a freshman living in Wright Residence Center, said he thinks a variety of different types of students live on each floor, mostly being “independent kids.”
Clark said he often times hears from friends that Wright is outdated, but said RPS staff working in the Wright Hoosier Café and Store and Resident Assistants have been “awesome.”
Heinemann, who lived in Eigenmann Residence Center as a freshman, admitted that she was worried about missing out on social activities when she was assigned to Eigenmann instead of McNutt.
However, she found not long after living in Eigenmann that it had many similar amenities as McNutt, including a c-store and nearby bus stop.
“People were social. They sat in lounges,” Heinemann said. “I originally was worried that it would be too quiet of an environment, too isolated, and it just wound up being like anywhere else.”
