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While you sun yourselves in far-flung locales, remember, gentle readers, that the 2008 housing lottery waits for no one. In the spirit of steadfastness, we invite you for a brief sojourn back to East Campus.
A Brief Guide to East Campus, from someone who lives in Wien
Next door to the dilapidated honeycomb that is Wien Hall rises the stentorious [point taken! – ed.] edifice of East Campus. With its own moat-like brick-layed “plaza” serving little or no purpose except during Orientation Week (hotdog party memories anyone?), EC lives up to its reputation as a latecomer to the campus housing circle, a distant add-on to the cozy buildings surrounding the lawns and nestled down among the residential side-streets of Broadway.
As an outsider, I’m afraid I have little to offer in the way of gross-out anecdotes about bathrooms or complaints about maintenance or broken doors or somesuch thing. I do offer a hodge-podge of general notes on the dorm, though, that might be helpful to potential residents:
- Your roommates matter big time, although it’s likely yours will be hand-picked from your inner circle of Awesome People, which should put you in the clear. If, as a freshman, you decide to take the risk of being “excluded” in an EC exclusion suite, proceed with caution. Horror stories have ranged from “interviews” with upperclassmen who ask first-years about their sex and drug habits before summarily denying them a spot in their suite to pairs of tender outsiders attempting to survive in the midst of psychotic upperclassmen freakouts/binges.
- Three varieties of rooms exist: townhouses, high-rises, and 2-person flats.
- Townhouses include a huge common area with suburban island countertop. Creative and well-funded suites will use this space to set up a home movie theater, foosball/ping pong/whatever table, or at least offer their space for get-togethers and communal dinners. Uncreative suites will merely let the garbage pile up, the white walls go unadorned, and ignore the awesome kitchen setup. Again, roommates matter—you’ve been warned.
- High-rises benefit primarily from absurdly cool views and a decent living-room area with adjoining kitchen; doubles are versatile in that they have large single rooms, but before you commit to one, make yourself aware of the super-cramped table and kitchen areas.
- EC courtyard has been described as dystopian, and I won’t deny it bears a strange resemblance to Oceania, with turret-like watchtowers, eerily lit stoops, and swirling piles of leaves and cigarette butts pooling in every corner. At the end of the courtyard, moreover, is the Heyman Center for the Humanities—there is nothing worse than Gayatri Spivak catching you nursing a 40 on the steps of a townhouse. Again, you’ve been warned.
- Finally, each floor of the EC highrise offers its own spin on the hall lounge: you’ll see some floors with computer labs, others with exercise equipment and even a pool table.
If you’re an upperclassman, you stand a good chance of ending up in EC. And if you’ve been in the majority the past two years, you already know you have a lot to look forward to after McBain and Wien/Shapiro.
– KER
If you live in River, McBain, Shapiro, or 113th and would like to contribute to our housing lottery coverage by writing a post like this one, send an email to bwgossip@columbia.edu
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@the courtyard was also used for great BBQ cookouts by the EC RAs. :)
@ok so it’s one thing to not have someone living in EC to write the review, but at least know its a 2-person flat not a double! a double is one room with two beds. a 2-person flat of which EC has i think 35 is two spacious single rooms sharing a kitchen and bathroom (theres not really a lounge and the reviewer is right in pointing out that theres a cramped little space with a table that tries to substitute for one…)
there are also a handful of doubles , actual doubles, somewhere on the 6th?8th? floor but im not sure if theyre in the housing lottery. i believe theyre used as “hotel” rooms for parents visiting and whatnot
@Its true that There is less fun to be had in EC these days in terms of parties, but living in a suite with 4 of your best friends and not being able to throw a raucous party is still better than living in broadway and not being able to throw a raucous party.
Also seriously Bwog, you have NOONE that lives in EC?
I would say getting various opinions from rising sophs that went into EC exculsions would probably be the most valuable thing here…most seniors know about the good/bad points of EC by the time they have the chance to live there, but for freshmen who are trying to decide between a double in mcbain or going for EC exclusion it might be useful.
@EC used to be the social epicenter of campus. Then, starting last spring, this school started making it abundantly clear that they are no longer concerned with quality of life issues, but rather they are focused on minimizing all legal liabilities to themselves. By making campus life suck they know that with NYC at our door we will just go drink in the city as the costs of organization for the student body to rally and lodge a protest are too high. Its just too easy for everyone to go to a bar in the city than to deal with the monolith of Low. Where the real misfortune and disservice from the administration come in is when of age students want to throw a party with other upper class students. So a bunch of seniors and juniors who have decided that they are tired of the hassles involved with the bar scene and wish to have a night in will be prevented from doing so by the Hitler’s Junge RAs this year and a newly aggressive-towards-students security force. The equivalent of this would be if someone forced my parents from a party at their apartment and made them go out to bars because the superintendent didn’t like the idea of them having a drink with friends in their own apartment. Fuck this school. No donations from me.
@LOL Bwog Dear Christ, Bwog, this is wahjah. I can’t believe you couldn’t get an EC resident to write this.
What’s next? Guide to getting an English major as written by the statistics department?
@why are there no pictures?
@Really I know that critiquing Bwog is like shooting fish in a barrel, but could you really not find someone in EC to write about EC? What the hell do I care what a Wien resident thinks of East Campus?
@ECer http://www.wikicu.com/East_Campus
@grammar fascist Stentorian. Not Stentorious.
@follow-up re: Stentorian – I do not think it means what you think it means.
@Anonymous If by “stentorious” the writer means “stentorian,” we must still replace “edifice” with “orifice” for the sentence to make any sense. Now, I don’t live in the EC, but I am still qualified to talk–no, review–shit, give tours of it.
@Not necessarily What if the edifice to which one refers is a Vanuatuan gong? Could such an edifice not be described as “stentorian” if it is loud enough?