The Undergraduate Community at Fischer (UCF) is based out of eight buildings, which are arranged in a horseshoe and are part of Fischer Graduate Residences, a complex of 37 apartment buildings on the northeast side of campus.
The UCF is the University’s 33rd undergraduate residential community, but it’s not like the other 32.
Notre Dame opened the UCF last semester because undergraduate students had asked the University to provide them with on-campus apartments for years, according to Karen Kennedy, associate vice president for residential life.
The single-sex, stay-hall system
The 32 undergraduate residential communities that preceded the UCF were formed in residence halls. Campus currently has 15 halls for women and 17 for men.
Halls can lodge anywhere between about 100 and 270 students. They feature various room configurations that sleep up to six roommates. Every hall contains a chapel, gym, laundry room, at least one kitchen, communal bathrooms and common space for socializing or studying.
Freshman students are randomly assigned to a hall. Many students remain in that hall until moving off campus senior year, after fulfilling the University’s three-year residency requirement.
Like a hall, the UCF possesses a rector, assistant rectors who are graduate students and residential assistants who are seniors. The community has its own apparel, government, mascot and events as well.
But with an approximate capacity of 80 students, the UCF is tinier than Carroll Hall, the smallest hall on campus.
Male and female undergraduates may transfer into the community following their freshman year.
Each UCF apartment accommodates two students and has two bedrooms, one bathroom and a furnished living and kitchen space. UCF residents do laundry, attend Mass, exercise and socialize at a community center, which all who live at Fischer Graduate Residences share.
Why the UCF?
Senior Graeme Marshall said he enjoyed his experience in Knott Hall. He became good friends with three hall mates and two men from Dunne Hall, who “basically lived” in Knott.
After residing beyond the oversight of Residential Life and family during summer internships, Marshall said he knew he wanted to move out of Knott senior year.
He wanted his own kitchen, Marshall explained. Plus, all his people in Knott were moving off campus or going to be residential assistants. And Marshall was tired of dealing with the condition of Knott’s bathrooms on weekend nights, he added.
Marshall said he and his five buddies considered renting a house together.
“Me and Jackson, my current roommate at Fischer Undergrad, saw what that was going to end up being like,” Marshall said. “Those guys — they’re a little crazy. We love hanging out with them but didn’t want to live with them.”
When the University announced the opening of the UCF last February, Marshall said applying to live there was a no-brainer.
Marshall said he likes the convenience of living on campus. The UCF isn’t too far from where his friends live off campus, and Marshall has a parking spot right in front of his apartment. According to Marshall, the UCF is more expensive than some off-campus options, but it’s cheaper than many others.
Junior Emily Marchal, who shares a UCF apartment with her sophomore-year roommate from Lyons Hall, said the pair transferred into the UCF in large part due to the amenities.
Marchal prefers having more room to study for the LSAT, and her roommate loves to cook.
They were also curious to see how male hall culture and female hall culture would mesh in the new environment, Marchal added.
“We were both excited about the coed aspect because that’s just very new to Notre Dame,” she said.
Junior Marry De Austria said she didn’t especially like her experience residing in a hall.
She enjoys cooking and baking but would always bump into someone whenever she wanted to make something.
De Austria, her sophomore-year roommate and her roommate’s cat transferred into the UCF for the surplus space and the solitude, De Austria explained.
“It’s a way for us to get closer to each other,” De Austria said. “It’s not like we’re surrounded by people. It’s just us two in that apartment.”
The inaugural community co-presidents
Marshall, Marchal and De Austria are the first co-presidents of the UCF. No UCF resident was willing to assume presidential duties alone, so the trio split the load, they explained.
De Austria said she was reluctant to put her name in the hat for president because the job description was “pages long.”
“It was daunting going into it because there wasn’t a framework or all these traditions that a lot of the other dorms have,” Marchal added.
Marshall said he got involved in the UCF’s government because he thought he could help residents become better neighbors.
In January, the community threw its first SYR, which was attended by about 40 UCF residents and their guests, according to Marshall. Participants enjoyed food at the community center and then were bused to Howard Park for ice skating.
The trio organized a trick-or-treating event on Halloween to encourage residents to visit each other’s apartments. Marshall said the UCF has gathered for service events and musical performances as well.
UCF staff members host regular events, and the co-presidents meet with the community weekly, Marshall added.
The co-presidents’ top priority has been getting residents to talk to one another, according to Marshall. He said a sizable portion of the UCF population transferred into the apartments because they didn’t want anything to do with their hall communities.
“They wanted more privacy,” Marshall said. “They wanted to be left alone, which is perfectly respectable … listen, that’s part of the reason I went there.”
While leaving the people who really want privacy in peace, the trio has striven to pull the rest of the residents out of their apartments, Marshall explained.
Another priority of the nascent UCF government is improving the community center’s gym.
De Austria said Marshall is the UCF’s spokesman and possesses “that aggression that a leader should have.” On the other hand, Marchal is the approachable leader, De Austria added. Marchal said De Austria creatively looks after the administrative aspects of the presidency.
Odds and ends
Marshall said the University’s parietal rules, which had only prohibited male guests from visiting female undergraduate residential communities during certain hours and vice versa, were refined for the UCF’s opening since the community accommodates male and female students.
“We’re not allowed to have anybody over past parietals except the residents of the apartment,” Marshall explained.
Though their apartments are strategically spread out across the horseshoe, Marshall said UCF staff members aren’t writing up many rule breakers. Like in a hall, staff members go on “rounds” at night, but all they do is walk around the outside of the apartments, he added.
“We don’t really have issues with rules anyway. People are pretty chill up there,” Marshall said. “But also you’ve got more leeway just because it’s just harder to enforce them.”
The Fischer Graduate Residences property, which includes the UCF apartments, is managed on behalf of the University by Bradley Company, a Midwestern real estate company. The apartments were built in the early 1990s, according to the South Bend Tribune.
Marshall said each apartment comes with carpeting, closets, a couch, two sitting chairs, a refrigerator, a kitchen range, a dinner table, four dining chairs and other amenities. Beds and dressers are found in the bedrooms.
Over the years, the apartments have become a bit unique, Marshall added.
“Grad students have come in and decided, ‘Oh, I don’t really like that sofa. I’m going to take that out and replace it, and I’ll just leave it,’” Marshall said. “I don’t know if it’s an officially sanctioned thing, but they don’t care as long as there is still a sofa and two chairs in it by the time that you’re done.”
UCF residents must purchase a meal plan, but Marshall said they can go with any of the six plans available to on-campus undergraduates, even the ones typically restricted to seniors.
The undergraduates don’t interact much with the graduate students living at the apartments other than in the community center because they are sequestered in that horseshoe, Marshall explained.
On Sundays, Marshall said the undergraduates and graduate students come together for Mass.
Current UCF residents are overwhelmingly juniors and seniors, according to Marshall. He said those who transferred into the community hail from nearly every hall on campus.
“They were trying to infuse all sorts of cultures,” Marchal said. “I think going forward it might have more of a culture of its own.”
