A deep-dive into Columbia’s common spaces.

If you have spent any time at Columbia, you’ve heard the phrase “stress bubble”. When many think of our campus, they don’t think of a place that is inviting to build community. Freshmen encounter plain white classrooms, a lack of space for clubs to meet, and notably, a lack of space to just hang out. 

Columbia’s physical space has an issue with being uninviting and bad for fostering community. This is particularly an issue with Columbia undergraduate dorm lounges. Across the board, they are small, uncomfortable, and just lacking. When I’ve visited friends at other colleges, their lounges have couches! And places for more than five people to comfortably sit! Is that too much to ask for?

These frustrations came about when I lived in John Jay last year. The lounges in that building are notorious for being kind of gross (although much better than the 2007 Furnald floor lounge pictured in the header). Each floor only had a table with max four wood chairs, and four-to-six weird, spinny lounge chairs. It meant that if you wanted to do movie night with your floor, you could kind of only invite a few neighbors (unless you got someone to spoon with you in the chair, which probably a no if you just met). My new dorm is somehow even worse. In my floor of McBain, we have three wooden chairs, and three plasticy small lounge chairs. The space itself is huge, but it is used so poorly. 

This isn’t only an issue in the dorms that I have had the unfortunate opportunity to live in. Out of all four freshman dorms, only Carmen has couches on every floor and lounges that feel nice to actually be in. Is it surprising that they are known for being more social? In Furnald, in order to do a movie night with maybe seven people in a floor lounge, we had to bring in a friend’s couch. 

My problem with this is that I know Columbia has money it could be using. Is a couch really too much to ask for? It shows that fostering community and bonds between undergrads is not a priority at all anymore. Our “student center,” Lerner, has a similar issue. All of the furniture is so plasticy, cheap, ugly, and uncomfortable. It is not a welcoming space to just hang out in. This leads to people preferring to congregate in individual rooms, which is worse for knowing people on your floor and making new friends.

While I don’t think this is just a Columbia issue, whenever I have visited friends at other colleges, their dorms feel so much less stale. They feel like people actually live there and want to be there. Even UChicago, allegedly “where fun goes to die,” has better dorms than us. Of course, Columbia students are notoriously busy and don’t spend much time in dorms, but everyone I know can relate to the idea of feeling isolated and like they want greater community at Columbia. 

Also, this wasn’t always an issue here! In my opinion, whenever Columbia renovates dorms they make them more hostile to be in. On the WikiCU I found a photo of an old John Jay lounge from 2007,  where you can see, yes, a couch! I also found this photo from the same time of a gorgeous, wood-panneled lounge in Wallach. I don’t think that is there anymore? Was it turned into the gaming lounge? Who’s idea was that?

While there are many reasons why it may feel like Columbia lacks greater community, I think it is important to look at the places students return to every day. Becoming an RA has made me think more about Residential Life Through conversations with my residents, I have heard some of these same points echoed, as most of them don’t like our lounge and only go in it to cook. 

I leave you all to question how our space could be better used to foster actual community. I still have had so many wonderful moments in our dorms, I just wish they were more welcoming. I looked through old stories of Columbia students and their experiences with dorms in this September 2005 issue of Columbia College Today. It was a very wonderful read, and I recommend it to see how we can build Columbia’s community to a level that feels right. If you resonate with my frustrations at all, leave Columbia Housing some feedback with this form.

Furnald header via WikiCU

Current John Jay via Columbia University

Princeton lounge 1 via Wikimedia Commons

Princeton lounge 2 via Wikimedia Commons

2007 John Jay via WikiCU

Wallach and McBain via Bwog Archives