Colleges Would Rather Freshmen Not Choose Their Roommates

In 1926, the University of Wisconsin published a brochure advertising its new men’s dormitories. “Here … the man from the well-to-do home and the man who tends furnaces to buy his text-books will learn respect for each other across a common table,” the booklet read, “and the son of banker and farmer will find mutual understanding, of a winter’s evening, in give and take to the crackling of logs in a wide fireplace.”