A new Bwogger and former Furnaldian gives a dramatic retelling of the first time she went deep into Carman’s halls.

Here’s something I discovered during my freshman year at Columbia: the Columbia Housing lottery is basically the Sorting Hat. Despite ranking Furnald as my fourth choice, I ended up there anyway, and honestly, it makes sense. Everyone knows Furnald to be the “quiet dorm,” and they’re not wrong; most Furnaldians are introverted and prefer to socialize quietly, at least within Furnald’s walls. Take two people from any given floor and they probably haven’t gotten more than a hello from each other, and even by the end of the year, it’s likely they still will not know their floormates well. This is not to say that Furnald is full of antisocial people, but that we prefer to come back to our rooms or lounges after a long day of classes and chatter and simply finish our homework in peace. There are obviously exceptions here but let’s just say the Furnald Vibe™ can be felt as soon as you step in our lobby.

But that’s enough about Furnald. Let’s talk about Carman.

Just as Furnald is the “quiet dorm,” Carman is unquestionably the “social dorm,” making these two dorms natural enemies. I think at this point you can guess my thoughts on Carman. Being that I had exactly one close friend who lived there, it was usually easy to avoid, and avoid it I did. The few times I did go into Carman, I would make a beeline for the elevator, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the vicinity, and dash through the still-opening elevator doors to my friend’s room, which was a few yards away. This system worked for me, and for the whole school year, I did not travel anywhere beyond the Carman elevator and my friend’s room next to it.

But then sophomore year came, and I was tasked with flyering the freshman dorms to recruit for a student group. I checked the spreadsheet to see which dorms I was in charge of and gasped in horror. There it was, in the little white box next to my name: Carman.

This had to be some sort of joke; I had made it a whole year without going that deep into Carman, and now, as a sophomore, I would finally have to travel through its hallways and stairwells? And not just through parts of it, but through every single floor? You can imagine the sense of doom I felt, gloomily printing out my flyers and searching dejectedly for the masking tape in my backpack.

After struggling with those absurd glass doors (seriously, why do they open like that?!?), I made it to the security desk. Immediately my freshman year Carman memories came flooding back to me. I remembered seeing people who look like they would have bullied me in high school and the tinder matches I never spoke to at every turn, and I could almost smell that rancid elevator stench that paired disgustingly well with the strange smudges on the elevator ceiling. I stepped into the elevator, which did indeed stink, and pressed the button for the top floor. Why the hell do they carpet the elevators?! I thought, and not for the first time. As the doors opened, I took a deep breath and stepped onto Floor 13.

Yup, it was the same. Even at close to 11pm, the lounge was loud and full of extroverts screaming at each other. Frantically, I pasted my flyers to the wall and ran down the stairwell, which was full of random pipes, chipped paint, scrawls on the walls, and trash on the floor. A solitary piece of gum stuck to my shoe. Disgusting!! I knew I had to make my escape.

I burst through the doors at the next floor, where, shockingly, the lounge only had one person doing homework. Phew. I breathed a sigh of relief and flyered the wall at a more normal speed. Feeling slightly more adventurous, I decided to see if there was anywhere to flyer at the other end of the hall. I tread cautiously past that line of armchairs that absolutely invite yelling from one end to the other. (Why would housing not arrange those chairs in a circle more conducive to group conversations? Anyways.) Not seeing any other space for flyering, I kept going. This was further than I had ever gone before, and I had a brief moment of pride in myself for braving this new frontier.

That’s when it got unbelievably worse.

For there they were, the hallway garbage cans, heaping with foul-smelling trash and with no walls to hide them. There was no compactor room, or even a chute in the wall to dispose of waste. Instead there were simply bins that even Oscar the Grouch would have turned up his nose at, if he had a nose. The sights, sounds, and smells of this place were overwhelmingly awful. Where was the quiet cleanliness of Furnald?! Clutching tight to my remaining flyers, I raced back to the stairs, knowing that, if I got out of there in one piece, I would never come back.

I should have just asked for a different dorm assignment via Bwog Archives