Student Life
Student Organizations
All students are members of the Vassar Student Association (VSA), which is funded by the student activity fee and run by elected student leaders. At most schools, the student activity fee goes into the campus activities office budget. At Vassar, 100% of the activity fee goes to the Vassar Student Association. They decide how to distribute the money (well over half a million dollars). That’s a lot of responsibility and a lot of power, and Vassar students use it effectively.
One of the VSA’s main functions is to oversee extracurricular activities. Any student can begin an organization, but in order to get funding from the VSA, he or she must first get “authorization” — submit a constitution, demonstrate activity for a year, and then come before the council for approval.
The range of student organizations is as broad and as diverse as the interests of Vassar students. There are currently over 100 organizations — club sports, political groups, affinity groups, a photographer’s club, social action groups, newspapers and literary magazines, comedy troupes, an FM radio station, a filmmakers group, environmental groups, and performing groups, among others. To learn more about the VSA or to see a list of authorized orgs, visit the VSA website.
There is a lot going on at Vassar — about 1,650 campus-wide events annually. That figure includes lectures by well-known scholars and public figures as well as concerts, films, dramatic productions, art exhibitions, conferences, and social, cultural, and athletic events. Many of these events are student initiated — planned, publicized, and carried out by the 100+ organizations described above.
At a lot of other schools, the campus activities administrator is responsible for programming; s/he typically puts together a list of big-name entertainers (rock bands, comedians, etc.) and then submits it to a student committee for their input. At Vassar, it’s the other way around. A student organization called ViCE (Vassar Campus Entertainment) is responsible for bringing in outside entertainers, with the Campus Activities staff acting as facilitators.
Vassar calls the residences “houses” rather than “dorms” because they’re meant to be the students’ homes, not just a place to stash their stuff. Each house has a personality, created by the students who live there, and there’s a tradition of friendly rivalry between houses. All Vassar students think their house is the best; oddly enough, they’re all right.
There’s a strong sense of community in the residences which comes from the way they’re organized. Each house is self-governing and self-directing, with leadership provided by the house team. The house team includes the following:
- one or two house fellows — faculty members and their families who live in the house and play a major role in the intellectual and cultural life of the house
- several student fellows — sophomores who are chosen and trained by the dean of students and then assigned to small groups of first year students to make the transition to life at Vassar as smooth as possible
- house intern — a junior or senior who coordinates the activities of the student fellows
- house advisor — a member of the Residential Life staff who serves as a liaison with the college administration and coordinates programming
- student officers (president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and freshman representative) who are elected by the house and also represent the house on the Vassar Student Association Council
Most students live in the same house from their first year until they’re seniors (or occasionally juniors), when they become eligible to live in one of the college’s three partly furnished apartment complexes. Within easy walking distance of the library and academic buildings, these apartments house four to five students, each with his or her own bedroom.
To learn more about residential life and to read descriptions of the specific houses, visit the Residential Life website.
What’s the one thing that students on just about every college campus complain about? Right. But not at Vassar. One reason (again) is student involvement. There’s a student advisory committee (the Food Committee) that gives Campus Dining a lot of input about what students want. The other reason is that Campus Dining listens, and they go above-and-beyond to make the campus dining experience as un-institutional as possible.
Several years ago, for example, Campus Dining initiated a farm-to-college pilot program to bring fresh, locally grown food to the college — cage-free eggs, hormone-free milk from Hudson Valley cows, fresh produce. Recently, the program attracted the attention of celebrity chef Michel Nischan and Green Wave, an organization that promotes sustainability and local foods. You can read about their visit to campus and the Big Sauce Challenge, an Iron Chef-style competition that pitted aspiring student chefs against each other. To read about the meal-point system or to find out what’s on the menu this week, visit Campus Dining.
Vassar’s goal in athletics is to meet the full range of needs of a diverse community — from scholar-athletes who are top competitors in their sports to weekend players looking for recreation to non-athletes interested in keeping fit. The athletics program offers a wide range of intercollegiate varsity, club, intramural, recreational, and fitness options. Over half the student body is involved in one or more of these programs.
The college fields 25 varsity teams and is a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III, Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), New York State Women’s Collegiate Athletic Association (NYSWCAA), and the Liberty League. Athletes are supported by coaches who are also, with few exceptions, members of the teaching faculty in the Department of Physical Education, and many of whom were top intercollegiate athletes themselves. To read profiles of Vassar’s varsity teams and coaches, visit the Athletics website.
Quite possibly the most frequently used facility on campus aside from the library, the Athletics and Fitness Center is a 53,000-square-foot building with a varsity gym, an elevated running track on the gym’s upper deck, and a fitness center with cardiovascular equipment, free weights, and machine weights.
Connected to the Athletics and Fitness Center is Walker Field House, a flexible multipurpose facility with 42,250 square feet of floor space (where many teams hold indoor practices) as well as a 25-meter, six-lane pool with a separate diving well with 1-meter and 3-meter boards.
Kenyon Hall houses the squash courts (international and hardball), racquetball courts, a wood-floor volleyball gym, dance studios, and a 250-seat dance theater. Outdoor facilities include a nine-hole golf course, 13 tennis courts, cross country courses, a quarter-mile track, playing fields for soccer, field hockey, lacrosse, and rugby, a rowing facility on the Hudson River, a new locker room complex and sports medicine facility at Prentiss Field, and (most recent addition) a new baseball diamond with dugouts and stadium lights.
As a residential college, Vassar is committed to providing support services to help students make the most of their time at Vassar. The Office of the Dean of the College oversees and coordinates services that directly impact the quality of student life, both academic and non-academic.
The Learning and Teaching Center offers individual assistance and workshops for students who seek to improve their reading and writing skills, mathematical proficiency, and overall study skills, and for students who are preparing for graduate school entrance examinations. The center also coordinates tutoring services, available in most academic subject areas.
The Office of Disability and Support Services facilitates the full participation of students with disabilities in all aspects of college life. Self-identified students with permanent or temporary disabilities who wish to request accommodations meet with the director to develop an individualized plan.
The Counseling Service, staffed by psychologists, clinical social workers, and a consulting psychiatrist, provides confidential help to students coping with personal, social, vocational, and academic concerns. Free of charge to enrolled students, services include individual and group counseling, assessment, consultation, referral, and educational outreach to the Vassar community.
There are numerous other resources for students looking for advice and support on personal and academic issues — the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, the Office of Campus Life, the ALANA (African American/Black, Latino, Asian/Asian American, Native American) Center, Blegen House, and International Services, to name a few. For the complete list, visit the Dean of the College website.
