The Intentional Learning and Service (ILS) program at Gustavus is no more. The program, whose goal was to give groups and organizations at Gustavus an opportunity and a space to give back to the community, was abandoned for the time being by the Residential Life Office, because the program was not operating as intended.

“The idea, which is referred to as Living and Learning in Residential Life terms, is used effectively by groups like Crossroads. The system we were using just wasn’t working,” Area Coordinator Andy Hagen said. “It may have been that since the beginning of the program, the Residential Life Office had insufficient staff to coordinate it. It wasn’t that the groups were inefficient, it was the program. The groups may have felt abandoned by a lack of resources.”

A majority of the Seventh Street houses that were once part of the ILS program are now simply four-person housing areas. Not all of them are, however. The Walker and Ten-O-Nine Houses, which are used by the Asian Cultures Club (ACC) and Pan Afrikan Student Organization (PASO), will continue to be used by those organizations.

“Those two houses were designated by a past administrator to be used by these organizations through a partnership with the Diversity Center,” Area Coordinator Shawn Grygo said.

The Johnson House is being donated to the St. Peter Fire Department and is going to be burned down, due to mold. The Peterson House is being used by collegiate fellows that work with the Seventh Street houses, College View Apartments and Arbor View Apartments this year.

“Being a collegiate fellow for the Seventh Street houses holds a few different responsibilities than working with the traditional on-campus housing buildings,” Junior Communication Arts and Literature Teaching Major and Collegiate Fellow of the Seventh Street houses Claudia Martinez said. “We don’t do rounds to the houses like we do for the apartments. Instead the goal with the houses is to build a community.”

“We do ensure that people living in the houses are being respectful and clean, and hold one-on-one meetings to ensure the residents are getting along. When residents are living in the Seventh Street houses, it’s easy to get disconnected from the rest of campus, so it’s our job to hold events to create a community, generally with the College View and Arbor View Apartments,” Martinez said.

“The ILS program is something that we would consider bringing back eventually, but for now it was just not working the way that we would have liked,” Area Coordinator Shawn Grygo said.

“The door has been left open, and it is something we’d be willing to consider bringing back if a more efficient program were created, but there has been no talk about it yet,” Grygo said.