President Hanlon’s plan, according to the college, includes these elements:

By the fall of 2016, every student who enters Dartmouth will be placed in one of six house communities. Each community will have a cluster of residence halls as a home base, be responsible for organizing and hosting social and academic programs, and eventually, have a dedicated space for study and social interaction. Beginning sophomore year, students will reside within their residence hall cluster when living in the dorms, but even those students living in a first-year dorm, Greek house, affinity house or off-campus will be included in all community activities and events.

Each Residence Community will have a house professor and graduate students in residence.

The article in The D has extensive observation from Robert O’Hara of The Collegiate Way.

The six “houses” presumably will be these, found at the current “residential communities” page:

• East Wheelock
• The Fayerweathers, Ripley/Woodward/Smith, Wheeler & Richardson
• Massachusetts Row, the Gold Coast and Hitchcock
• McLaughlin Cluster
• The Russell Sage Cluster
• Topliff/New Hampshire and The Lodge

The preferred nomenclature seems to have shifted in recent months from “neighborhoods” to “houses” or “house communities.” The 1980s-1990s word “cluster” now refers to groups of faculty hires.