Oldenborg Committee Turns to Maryland
By Justin duRivage
News Writer

Phoenix Liu, coordinator of Language House, an international center and dormitory at the University of Maryland – College Park, spoke at the Oldenborg Center last Wednesday about the international center she manages. The Oldenborg Task Force, a group formed earlier this year by Dean Garry Kates to reevaluate the future of Oldenborg, brought Dr. Liu to Pomona. In her remarks Liu described a foreign language residence hall much more regimented than the Oldenborg Center.
Language House is organized using the same ecumenical approach as Oldenborg with multiple languages in the same building. Where it differs from Oldenborg is in its intensity and selectivity. The University of Maryland – College Park has over 30,000 undergraduates yet Language House has only 103 residents, making it smaller than Oldenborg at an institution more than 20 times Pomona’s size. The result is fierce competition and highly motivated students, according to Liu.
Students living in Language House are expected to speak their target language at all times while in the building. If they are caught speaking English repeatedly by either mentors, RAs, or Dr. Liu, they are evicted. Maryland’s insistence on near total immersion is maintained, according to Liu, by both strictness and the demand that Language House residents complete intermediate level study of their language. In addition to the stringent admissions and residency requirements, Language House students are required to participate in a spring colloquium aimed to teach them more about the culture of their target language.
“We make sure the spark starts from day one,” said Liu referring to the strong sense of community developed by language clusters. Language clusters are the equivalent of Oldenborg language sections and are dived into apartments. A mentor, who leads each cluster, is responsible for organizing cluster events and, according to Liu, “keeping The Language House Coordinator informed of students’ progress.”
Faculty reaction to transplanting the strictness of Maryland to Oldenborg was skeptical. “I think she was terrific,” said Task Force member and Professor of French Monique Saigal. However, Saigal went on to say “she [Dr. Liu] was too military, a little bit extreme.” Economics professor Tahir Andrabi, also a member of the Oldenborg Task Force, said he doubted Oldenborg would adopt the “big brother, big sister” model seen at Maryland but he felt that it was the roll of the language faculty to come to a conclusion about how language instruction be implemented at Oldenborg.
Language House students live in apartments of four to six people that include both a kitchen and a living area. Students do their own cooking and do so in their foreign language. Oldenborg’s Acting Director Patricia Guenther-Gleason said that such an arrangement would be unlikely at Pomona, as it would conflict with the foreign language dining hall. Nevertheless, the Oldenborg task force is still considering programming ideas and any discussion of changing the Oldenborg facility is “a little premature,” according to Andrabi.
While Andrabi did not wish to discuss architectural changes that might be borrowed from the University of Maryland’s Language House, Professor Saigal did find architectural elements that appealed to her. “I like the multi-purpose room and the café,” she said referring to the international eatery and gathering room available to University of Maryland students at Language House.
Much like Oldenborg, Language House provides international and language oriented programming. According to Lui, Language House organizes weekly coffee chats, language weeks, an around-the-world dinner, and a cultural talent show to foster foreign language education and community. In addition to these more widely attended activities, Language House clusters organize weekly foci that include dinners, literary readings and craft projects.
The few students who attended Liu’s talk voiced mixed opinions. “Obviously there’s not enough foreign languages being spoken in Oldenborg, everybody speaks English all the time,” said Carol Beth Lambert ’05. While she felt that the University of Maryland was very different from Pomona College, Lambert said, “I think there were aspects of it [Language House] that are good, including the strict enforcement of foreign language speaking.” Not all students agreed with Lambert’s sentiments about strict language enforcement. Oldenborg resident Alicia Godlove ‘05 described Dr. Liu as, “a target language Nazi.”
As the Oldenborg Task Force works toward a conclusion about the future of Oldenborg, a consensus has nevertheless developed among faculty and administrators that Oldenborg residents are not speaking in their foreign languages, as would be expected in a foreign language dorm. As Guenther-Gleason has said, “the most important thing is the inspiration to encourage more foreign language speaking here.”