The campus center

Our first stop on campus was the campus center - a building that did not yet exist during our undergraduate careers, but was nonetheless a center of extreme controversy. The building stands in what was an empty grassy yard between the Alumni Gym, Olin hall, and the Higgins house. The cornerstone reads "2000".

(A brick building spreads out from
behind a squat hexagonal stone- and aluminum-faced tower with many windows.
Several aluminum signs bolted to the side of the building mark it as the
`campus center'.)

The campus center.

During our undergraduate careers, many disgruntled students grumbled loudly about the lack of a place on campus devoted to activities other than suffering. At the time, all the school had to offer was "the wedge": little more than a broad enclosed concourse between a pair adjacent buildings. The wedge had the appearance of a grimy airline terminal populated by a scattering of tired and disheveled travelers who had given up all hope of making their connections.

Fortunately, the new campus center doesn't reproduce this atmosphere. Gone is the 1970's industrial carpet with its ground-in wads of chewing gum. Instead, the interior of the new campus center is spacious and clean, with no shortage of glass walls and spun aluminum railings. A two-story wall of windows provides a scenic view of the Higgins House and its surrounding yard. Unfortunately, my inexpensive disposable camera was unable to cope with the contrast between the brightness of the windows and the darker interior, so my pictures of the inside of the campus center don't do it justice. Overall it appeared to be quite a comfortable and appealing place to hang about.

(Students sit clustered around tables
on a broad interior balcony; a wall of windows behind them reveals a scene
of snow falling on mature pines.)

Inside the campus center.

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