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For my book I've been developing a school for my students to go to, but am struggling with coming up with a suitable dormitory situation. I want to avoid the harry potter set up (four houses, each a comon room with separate boy/girl dormitories) as much as possible, although I am looking for that competitive aspect separate houses bring. Any ideas ? Or knowledge of private school set ups?
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posted
The "house" system long predates Harry Potter and there's no particularly good reason not to use it. Indeed, I venture to suggest you can probably put more depth and complexity into it than Rowling did.
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posted
Would it work to call them something other than "houses," such as "colleges" or "schools," perhaps? Isn't that how Cambridge and Oxford are organized?
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I would imagine American private schools would be vastly different from European private schools. My response would depend on type (military, prepatory, etc.) and location.
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I would assume you don't want regular collage dorms either. The collage I went to had the dorms set up two ways. One had three-two double and one single-rooms set up around a common bathroom. Another one had four or five double rooms, maybe one was single with a hallway that led to the bathroom.
Maybe that can give you ideas. Or as Kathleen suggested call them something else. Could get fancy and call them Chalets. Depending on where you want to take the socializing you could call the better ones Chalets and the older poorer ones Skid Row. The students in Skid Row could resent and/or work at moving up to the better ones.
BTW, from the description here I like the way Potter's houses were set up.
Yep, that means I may be the only one here who have either read the books or seen the movie.
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I think it has to depend on your school. Does the school limit the students to living on campus, or can they live wherever they can find lodging? Does the school own said on-campus or off-campus lodging? Who pays for it -- the school (through a donor or from student fees?) or the student out of their own pocket?
These all lead to different situations (and a different impact on the surrounding community).
Further, what are your economics in general (for your venue) and in particular? Is it the starving student, the well-funded student, the specialty scholarship, or a mix of several economic backgrounds? Each is likely to live in different circumstances.
In short, I think I would look at the economics of your society, and consider how that dictates students' living conditions. Of course, your first clue about your society's economics might BE how your students live.
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I went to a private university and dorms were called colleges or a hall. Most were co-ed dorms, with individual rooms shared by roommates of the same gender. Underclassmen dorms (freshmen/sophomores) had a residential advisor and we had common rooms at each dorm. There were also the dining halls where students from several dorms would converge for the daily meals.
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I agree with tchernabyelo. Go ahead and use the house system. Rowling did not make that up, she stole it from Thomas Hughes' *Tom Browne's School Days* (1857), a novel based on the author's experiences at Rugby.
*Tom Browne's School Days* is compulsory reading for anyone who writes a Bildungsroman set in a boarding school. It's one of those books that isn't widely read these days, but remains immensely influential through writers like Rowling that have read it. Even if you *haven't* read it, you'll end up copying it unconsciously, so you might as well get the good stuff first hand.
You can download *Tom Browne's School Days* from Gutenburg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1480). It's a splendid read and a great example of how to paint memorable characters.
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Well, at our (private) high school, we had dorms, specific buildings where groups of students resided...actually, that's what I took "houses" to mean in Harry Potter and in the British public-school system, but the reality of it may be more than that. (I was a day student.)
I don't think I'd use "houses" if I were trying for something American...
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Rowling didn't invent much of anything, she just put it together in an interesting way.
For my school experience we were separated by graduation year. And we had competitions. Sure it was hard for the sophomores to compete with the seniors, but they could try. When I was a junior we crushed the seniors at the Spirit Bowl, the only time in the schools history that happened.
You could have the various "teams" set by criteria other than where they happen to sleep. Then you could have the conflict of people of different "teams" being roomates.
I'm reminded of Ender's game where the teams at first were grouped by what ship they came on. Then later they were more like sports teams.
Or you could take the fraternity/sorority route.
Or there was the Drazi from Babylon 5, every five years they pull a ribbon out of a bag, half of them are green half of them are purple. Then the greens and purples war against each other to decide who will rule for the next five years.
posted
Lots if great ideas and input here. Think I'm going to stick with houses then, but seperate them through economics. The poorer students in large rooms full of bunk beds and the richer students getting private rooms. That should be plenty to build rivalries. Thank you all !
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posted
I'm thinking boarding school would be one of those areas where rich-vs-poor would likely break down, at least as far as luxurious accomodations in dorms would go...frat houses, now, would be a different matter. (Ah, there's a place for use of "houses" in the United States...)
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posted
I went to a private boarding school in England. The house system is common to 99% of private boarding schools 0f the 13-18 year age group.
Houses would often be named according to geographical features or descriptive features of the house itself, e.g. Field House, Hill House, River House, In School House, Gables. Or, if the house was previously something else it may retain that name, e.g. Hall House, Old Rectory House, etc. Some schools also alphabetised houses as well (for name tags on clothes), so A House was also Rectory House.
When I started we had to learn a whole book of details about the school in the first term (or get punished) including school slang, rules, names and places, teachers names ...loads of stuff.
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