Cate
Hank Ingram opened in 2008 and was the last building of the Commons transformation to be completed. It is composed of seven stories: floor one is the basement and laundry room, floor 2 is the lobby and boys dorms, floors 3 and 7 are all female, 4 and 5 are mixed gender, and 6 is all boys. I live on the 5th floor in room 508.
My floor is one long hallway with a common room in the middle. The common room is on both sides of the hallway and has six large windows on each side. There are tables with chairs for working (or not working in our case), as well as comfortable cushy chairs and sofas to lounge on. The community mission of the Commons at Vanderbilt is to “Embrace the diversity of the community, develop cognizance of individual role in creating a supportive environment, pursue opportunities to engage in university-wide efforts to bolster community, engage in dialogue with each other about behaviors that impact the community” (The Commons). The common room on Hank 5 does just that. Our floor has students from all major races, who live around the country and world, and who each have a unique personality and diversity of thought. 62 people live on our floor, so while everyone does not like to sit in the common room, there are many people who spend time with one another on a daily basis. This is what I pictured when envisioning my what my home in the dorm would be: getting to spend time with my friends and enjoying every minute of it.
Now that we are close to the end of the year, the set of people who use the common room has developed on our floor. One side is the quieter side during the day, where I sit when I want to get work done and not risk being distracted by my friends. It faces East and is bathed in warm sunlight every morning which is why before noon you will only ever see people on that side of the room. The West side is considerably louder, and that is where I like to sit in the afternoon and evening. I do not normally work in the common room when I need to be productive, so I enjoy getting to listen to everyone talk about their days while I pretend to do my homework until I put my books down and join the conversation. At one point there was a bit of tension between the East and West sides over the volume of the common room, but that went away pretty quickly, and the East side became louder as everyone instinctively realized that our common room was not going to be like the library. Most people go up the elevator on the side of the floor that is not their gender so that they have to walk past the common room, decide if they want to sit down, and say hi to the people who are sitting in it.
At the end of each side of the floor, the floor splits into two short Ls. My room is in the corner, and it is huge. It’s so large because, as I mentioned earlier, I have two roommates not just one. This is atypical of a classic college roommate experience, but it still feels very much like what I imagined my rooming situation to be like. Our room has two windows and three beds lofted all the way up to make room for desks, dressers, and drawers. My bed is right next to one of the windows, and I love laying down and looking out of it. I can see the entire downtown city skyline, and I watch the lights on the Batman AT&T tower that change color every few seconds. If I look straight directly out my window, I can see the Sony building, the parking lot outside Hank, and the circle where Uber drivers pick people up. It is very amusing on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights to see the other freshman walking around outside.
The closets are built into the wall, and between the beds there is an open rectangle. The open floor plan of the dorm rooms in Hank, as opposed to singles in a suite, I believe are integral to getting students to interact with their roommates rather than just shutting themselves off behind closed doors. Luckily, I do not wake up easily, and my roommates are quiet, so the open room is not a problem for me when sleeping. It does mean however, that when one of us makes a mess, the entire room looks untidy. Had I lived in a single, I would not have become friends with my roommates to the extent that I am today. It would have been very easy to get back to my room, close the door, and be alone (which can be great sometimes), but I would have missed out on a very formative experience of freshman year. I made two friends that I do not believe I otherwise would have, and while we do not spend much time together outside of our room, I love getting to talk to them when we are in it.
Every Wednesday night we have Hank Hangs so that “Despite being the most heavily populated House, Hank has a variety of programming that is sure to make our community feel small and intimate” (Hank Ingram). Hank Hangs take place in the lobby at 9:45, and dessert is provided for free by the dorm. It is a great time to socialize, eat donuts or brownies, and see people from other floors. The atmosphere is open and friendly with music playing in the background and chairs for people to lounge around on. I have friends on other floors in Hank who I do not get to see frequently during the week because of busy schedules, but I can always count on getting to see them for 20 minutes on Wednesday nights. Sometimes there are special Hank Hangs where speakers are brought in, or the night is focused on learning about a new way to actively engage in the community. Hank Hangs are not unique to Hank; there is Gillette Gelato and Stam Sweets, two of the other ten dorms on the Freshman Commons.
Of the ten dorms on Commons, five of them are new and five are historic. Vanderbilt stresses that “The historic houses are grouped around the upper end of Peabody Lawn and are as well loved as the newer houses” (The Houses). There is a considerable difference in the physical quality of the dorms on campus, but nevertheless people still love the community they live in. Many of the historic houses are smaller than the new ones, so the houses as a whole are tighter knit than the ones with hundreds of student living in them. Freshman Scarlett Bach, a Gillette (historic house) resident says: “Although Gillette isn’t the nicest house physically, I always look forward to returning to my dorm, knowing that a strong community of my peers, with whom I feel supported and connected, awaits.” Gillette has no common rooms, so it is important to note that students still find ways to connect with each other even when there is no easily accessible community space for them to do so. My grandmother, Nana, attended Vanderbilt University in the 1970s. She lived in Cole Hall, an all-female dorm that still exists on campus today. Similar to Gillette, Cole Hall does not have common rooms, but Nana “did feel like [she] had a sense of community” and notes that she “visited [with friends] while loitering in the halls.” This ideal of community has been at Vanderbilt for generations, and while the designs of the new college dorms have shifted with the decades, students attending the school 45 years apart still live in the same collective environment.
Looking through Time Magazine’s “The Evolution of the College Dorm” photo series, I see a lot that Hank has in common with the latter photos, albeit with much less excessive amenities. There are no rock-climbing walls or pool tables in my dorm, but the rooms are more spacious and there’s laundry in the basement. The Commons Center, a form of a massive common room for the entire Freshman class, holds the gym, dining halls, pool and ping-pong tables. Vanderbilt, an exceedingly wealthy school, has done a good job of providing fun and nice amenities without pampering the students with gilded waterfalls, escalators, and five-star steak restaurants in the dorms.
Perhaps you thought I was kidding about a place with waterfalls, escalators, and restaurants in the dorm, but I was not. Colleges like this do exists; one of my cousins, in fact, attends one of them. Preston goes to High Point University, and I have never seen a more extravagant school in my entire life than when I went to visit while passing through the area.
We first walked around campus, in and of itself a shock that we were not being driven around in one of the golf carts from a fleet specially designed for giving tours. Upon entering his dorm I was greeted by a sheet of falling water and a steak restaurant (where you have to wake up at 6am exactly a week before you want to eat to make a reservation). My parents, siblings, and I followed my cousin to his dorm where he slept in a standard-issue full sized bed in a room large enough three or four students but designed for two. The degree of luxury was excessive, and thought I was thunderstruck by all of it, the school seemed to be focused so much on outward appearances it seemed as though no one cared about academics. Don’t get me wrong – I would love to have a full-sized bed, but I can do without the waterfalls and three movie theaters in the basement. I have made great friends in my dorm without all of that, and that money feels like there are better uses, such as greater financial aid or improved teachers’ salaries, that it could be going towards. Vanderbilt University has bolstered community across the Freshman Commons by using space wisely and cost efficently, and I am very grateful for the residential experience that I have had thus far.
Works Cited:
“Hank Ingram House.” The Commons. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2019.
“The Commons Experience.” The Commons. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2019.
“The Houses.” The Commons. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2019.