Windham's common room in 1933. Photo courtesy of the Connecticut College Archives.
I remember during freshman orientation (in the looming shadow of finals, let’s remember the good old days) there was a super entertaining skit performed by students that took place in a freshman seminar. Slapstick (but still appreciated) humor aside, the major implication was that freshman seminars are often filled with the kind of students who wake up three minutes prior to the beginning of class and run downstairs to their common room with a pencil and a single piece of paper before falling asleep during the ensuing discussion. So basically, they’re filled with first year students, as the name of the class would imply. Part of this problem might be that some freshmen refuse to wear anything more business-casual than pajama pants in class. The other problem, some have suggested, could be the location of the classroom itself.
Freshman seminars have only been taught for the past few years, and have met in the common rooms of residential houses for an even shorter period of time. Not all of these classes are held inside dorms, but mine is. We meet in the Larrabee common room, which, aside from having the best Festivus decorations on campus, is spacious and has a large table that is theoretically conducive to a class discussion. Every other weekday I, along with about a dozen other students, sit down in Larrabee for class. Most of us live only a couple floors away, although a handful are from different houses. Does this mean that no one has ever been late? Absolutely not. I’ve seen people who live less than a minute away from class stumble in ten minutes late without a book in hand. Even I have cut it pretty close sometimes, under the ironic assumption that because it’s so close by, there’s no way I could ever end up being late. If having class literally in your own dorm doesn’t eliminate lateness, nothing will. On top of this, what’s the real point of having a class in a common room? Is it the coziness aspect? Cozy is good, but let’s flash to a couple weeks ago.
The class decided one day, due to a unanimous vote, to sit on the couches and chairs instead of at the table. This was fine with me, until I sat down on the couch and spent the next hour and fifteen minutes doing the ritual head-dipping-and-swaying technique of the exhausted college student. I probably wasn’t alone in this. Who is to blame? Well, technically I was for not having gotten enough sleep, but the couches probably didn’t help. As much as I hate to admit it, the hard, plastic penance devices that the public school system calls chairs may be the only way I can get my brain into thinking order, even though comparably luxurious couches are now available. Of course, the next time the class sat at the couches, I managed to stay alert, so who knows?
I asked some fellow freshmen how they felt about having class in the common room. A couple gave me the usual, “It’s great! I can roll out of bed, walk down the hall and be on time!” I share that opinion, but Molly Bienstock ’14, answered my question with a question. When I asked her what she thought of classes held in common rooms, she responded with, “I guess it makes sense, but is it because we don’t have the space?” Now there’s an idea I hadn’t thought of.
Could our common room usage be a sign of a burgeoning school population? By the time senior year comes around for my class, will we be forcing classes to meet at the outdoor classroom on Tempel Green in December? In all probability, no, not at all. “I mean, I’m not complaining,” Bienstock added, “the negative [aspects] aren’t really negatives.” Perhaps it’s a matter of space, perhaps not. I know that English professor Jeff Strabone, my freshman seminar professor, has expressed discontentment about certain aspects of teaching in a common room, mainly the lack of access to a projector, something he claims he was told would be provided to him.
All in all, do the pros of teaching and learning in a physically comfortable environment outweigh the cons of teaching and learning in what can sometimes be a mentally lethargic environment? I say yes. Other students say yes. One student says she guesses so, and a teacher wants a projector. I think this means that the idea works for the most part, but there’s always room for improvement. If some small alterations are made, I think next year’s freshmen might find their freshman seminar among their favorite classes. Well, their favorite classroom environments at least. •
My freshmen year, I recall how much I enjoyed the openness of Burdick common room (my dorm) or the cool environment that Larrabee’s long common room created. Having open common rooms, to me, made the dorm environment more communal. About a month and a half into fall semester, the school got more focused on having seminar classes in common room and the school went around putting doors (and in Larrabee’s case, windows) up on common rooms
I feel this makes them less of a casual space. Also, I know that Burdick in specific did not have a freshmen seminar class taught in it in ’08 or ’09, yet still had a massive number of tables brought into it each week like all the other common rooms.