Aryanna

Crawford House

Crawford House was built in 2006 on Ingram Commons, Vanderbilt’s residential campus for all first-year students, and houses 150 first years. It has 6 floors, students only living of floors 2 – 6, as the first floor, also known as the basement, functions as another common space and laundryroom. The lobby is located on the second floor along with our head of house’s home. The other half of floor two is male only, floor three is co-Ed, floor four is all female, floor five is all male, and floor six is female. I live on the 4th floor in room 402.

When I walk into my room, what I see are the standard two dressers, two desks, two closets, and two single beds of the standard dorm room, familiar to many across the United States.  When I say cinder block walls, college students and graduates know exactly what I mean. Even the students who live in the new apartment style suites which were more frequently constructed on college campuses from 1995 to 2004 than the traditional type dorms (Stephey), like mine, understand what my traditional dorm looks like.  

Compared to some other schools, the freshman dorms are nice.  While we may have the cinder block aesthetic unknown to the pages of Architectural Digest, the building is fairly new and doesn’t smell like mildew or feature weird stains on the floor (Yee). My building, Crawford, is among the newest of the freshman dorms. The carpet in the halls is navy blue which hides stains well.  The floor of my room is white tile, very easy to bleach.  

Men and women attending the same school was not even possible until 1833 when Oberlin College was founded as co-ed (Bucknell).  Female-only dorms on college campuses were first erected in the 1940s and then the rules were “draconian.” Women were unable to visit male dorm rooms and controlled by strict curfews (Stephey).  These policies continued into the 1960s. In our dorm, there is no curfew. Women and men are assumed to be able to think for ourselves and know to be respectful to others.  Our floor is monitored by one RA and she is moderately involved.  She is friendly with us all, stepping in only when a rule is obviously being broken or someone requests help. 

Each floor of Crawford has approximately 40 students in 20 rooms.  In addition to the rooms, my floor has a common room and three bathrooms.  The common room has couches and tables. They are institutional in nature, able to take heavy use and be somewhat easy to clean. Students spend less time socializing in the common room and more time in the student rooms.  The doors on our floor are almost always open. Students on my floor play music, watch movies, and just hang out.  We’re a close-knit bunch and our “best friends” are the students on the third floor. My RA and the RA on floor three are very good friends which is what initially created the bond between our floors. Also, the fact that floor three is co-Ed gives my floor a good mixture of guys and girls when hanging out downstairs. Ever since the first day of school there has been some sort of connection that has only grown stronger throughout the year. Many of the students date each other. Thinking about gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomics, and other differentiators, we are an inclusive bunch. 

What I like best about my dorm situation is the social life. For one, every Wednesday, my dorm has an event called CRAWFOGATO and we’re all encouraged to be silly from 9-11pm. Treats for attendees include ice cream, cookies, games, and more.  The purpose of this activity is just for house bonding and being social. Like the “quads… divided into small houses so that the boys would form family-like bonds” at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (Bauer-Wolf), this is the way our dorm system works as well. 

There are three bathrooms on every floor and they are shared between the people living on the floor. On our floor, the bathrooms are for women only, unless someone stands outside the door to let people know when a man is inside. On the third-floor there is one male bathroom, one female bathroom and one gender neutral bathroom.  

Downstairs on floor two there is a kitchen, and in the basement there is a laundry, common room, and two music rooms/study spaces.  I once asked about the reason for the music rooms and was told every dorm is required to have at least music room so freshman with instruments can practice without disturbing their neighbors. 

Our dorm has an open visitor policy. All a visitor needs in order to stay is a pass and then the visitor is welcome for as long as both roommates agree.  I live alone since my roommate withdrew from school after the fall term.  The perfect opportunity to list the bed on Airbnb (just joking). 

Crawford is one of nine residential buildings surrounding Commons, which is the main/ central building. This central building contains a gym, a two-story cafeteria, game room with pool tables, and study rooms usable by all students at Ingram Commons.  While these amenities do not place Vanderbilt on the list of the Most Luxurious Dorms in the U.S., they are more than adequate for me. 

 

Works Cited

Bauer-Wolf, Jeremy. “Author Explores the History of Dormitories in Forthcoming Book.” Author Explores the History of Dormitories in Forthcoming Book, 5 Mar. 2019, www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/05/author-explores-history-dormitories-forthcoming-book.

 

“History of Co-Education.” Celebrating 125 Year of Co-Education || History of Co-Education | Bucknell University, www.bucknell.edu/news-and-media/celebrating-125-years-of-co-education/history-of-co-education

Stephey, M. J. “The Evolution of the College Dorm – Photo Essays.” Time, Time Inc., 2018, content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1838306,00.html.

“The 10 Most Luxurious Dorms in the U.S.” Fastweb, 5 Nov. 2015, www.fastweb.com/student-life/articles/the-ten-most-luxurious-dorms-in-the-us.

Yee, Vivian. “Dorms You’ll Never See on the Campus Tour.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 July 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/education/edlife/the-worst-college-dorms-sometimes-most-loved.html.