The Department of Residence is probably no one’s favorite department on campus. By default, they are the department that a good portion of everyone’s money goes to each semester they live on campus. But it would take a lot to make the Department of Residence come up with something worse than the Fresh Start program and its unintended companion, the 75/25 ratio for dorm houses.

The Fresh Start program is pretty unsurprising stuff, particularly in a time when most of the universities around us have gone totally dry. It merely creates “substance-free” floors and visitation rules that will assure the parents of freshmen that if they’re sleeping around, at least they have to play without a home-bed advantage.

So the Fresh Start program allows freshmen to live in houses that are mostly freshmen, prevents them from having alcohol or drugs in their rooms, and doesn’t allow them to smoke in their rooms.

Then, in order to prove that these freshmen were “active,” there was a lovely co-curricular transcript, on which residents had to submit a statement of clubs they were in, community service they’d done, and other “personal development,” which, by definition, means developing from being a fetus or some sort of android technology. As a direct result of the fact that not having these three things would lead to getting kicked out, I can say for certain that my own transcript was fictional, and that most of the people I knew had the same situation.

I can say these things, because alas, I already lived in the Fresh Start program my freshman year and consider myself in every way handicapped by the experience. The building, the beloved Maple Hall, was fine, the facilities were pristine, but living there closely resembled hell.

But meaningless, ineffective policies are hardly the worst thing the Department of Residence has in store, because the controlled ratio is frivolous, dangerous and harmful to every student on this campus.

The ratio, originally set at 75 percent freshmen and 25 percent upperclassmen as a goal for houses, has been revised to allow a sliding scale of up to 50 percent not freshmen. And for this, we should feel angry. Because although the residence department listened to student complaints, they didn’t get the point.

As a former resident of Fairchild House in Roberts Hall, I have seen the effect of a floor with seemingly tenured residents. I lived there in the first year where the floor was 50 percent freshmen, and I was told on several occasions that it just wasn’t the same.

I’ve also seen how things have gone the last two years, and there’s something distinctly missing.

There was more tradition in Fairchild House than Maple will have in the next 50 years. Kaleidoquiz (which our alumni won again this year), the BWR Challenge, and a nice train of people being shuttled off to the GSB presidency, with Andy Tofilon and T.J. Schneider both being former Fairchildians, are all part of the Fairchild experience as much as the first weeks of August and 100 degree bedrooms or rattling heaters.

Fairchild has rivalries. Maple Hall didn’t have rivalries, it had “communities.” If one house challenged another to a football game, both houses would probably be tossed for advocating competition rather than cooperation.

Fairchild had all these things, and the primary reason is because it had people coming back for a second year or a third or a sixth.

Even if those people may drink or be less than “substance-free,” they’re at least a person who drinks that is in his second or third year in school, not like so many freshmen that drink their way out their first year, even if they do live in Maple Hall.

Let people live where they want. Freshmen certainly need space in the residence halls, so if a few upperclassmen have to be deposited in temporary housing to give freshmen dorm rooms, that is fine, but there’s no reason to toss them out altogether.

Policies shouldn’t be made unless they are effective, which takes care of the Fresh Start program. They also shouldn’t be made unless there is a defined benefit, which certainly eliminates a 75/25 ratio or any defined ratio.

The Fresh Start program looks, sounds and is stale. I’m thankful my fresh start lasted only a year. Otherwise I may never have gotten past the starting line.