Decorating your first dorm room is almost a rite of passage ... or at least my mom thought so. One of my first memories in Hanover is sneaking into a paint store with her, stealing over 100 strips of colors and taping these to strings to hang up in my room. It was a project, to say the least, and not one that was particularly worth it — maintaining these hanging strings of color was far too difficult for me to keep up.
But in pockets of campus, other students have chosen to devote more time, energy and creativity than I did to decoration. Even the tumultuous D-Plan, which whisks us off to new countries or buildings at the turn of every term, fails to hinder some students’ individuality in creating their own home away from home.
The challenge of finding these charming spots only increases the excitement of discovering one, so I set off to uncover campus's hidden gems amid the half-hearted posters.
I first encountered the living space of Caitlin Zellers ’16, who resides in McCulloch Hall this term. Her cozy room, with its soft lamp lighting and hand-sewn curtains, hardly looks like a dorm room. After spending the fall in the Sustainable Living Center and the winter off campus, Zellers has had only five weeks to make East Wheelock her home.
“People always say, ‘Why do you do your room so nicely if you’re only here for 10 weeks?’” Zellers said. “Your room is your little sanctuary. It’s all about you: you can have your quiet time, and I really want to enjoy the time I spend in my room, even if it’s only for 10 weeks, so everything I put in here is something that makes me feel happy.”
A “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) poster hangs above her bed, and on her walls are photos of friends from home, sailboats and cats and other ornaments — my favorite being a star-shaped dream catcher. The dream catcher was given to her by a woman with terminal cancer who she helped around the house and with yard work last spring with the Creative Lives After School Program at the White River School.
Her bed overflows with pillows. It is almost as if the room has never seen clutter; the objects on top of her desk, bookshelf and dresser are perfectly arranged, and Zellers dusts and vacuums every week. Two decorative sunflowers lie flat on the bookshelf and a pink tapestry covers one wall.
Zellers and her roommate share a two-room double. On the door between their rooms is a whiteboard that they use to write a different quote from their Yogi tea bags each day. “The purpose of life is to enjoy every moment.”
Hanging from Zellers’s bed is a strange donut-shaped contraption made of wood, rope and a glass jug. The jug is full of water and houses her beta fish, Ozzy. A plant rests in the wood below the jug. When sediment settles at the bottom of the jug, it can be opened to release it and water onto a plant as fertilizer. Zellers, from southern California, found the apparatus at a flea market in Hollywood.
She uses her room primarily to get away from constant stimulation on campus. Though she said she is not anti-party, she likes the separation between her dorm and her social spaces.
Perrin Hutcheson ’16 and her five roommates have created more of a social space in their North Fayerweather sextet. Their common room, surrounded by two triples and two full bathrooms, creates an atmosphere where friends are welcome.
After walking into the room, my eye was immediately drawn to the back corner, where four fridges belonging to individual roommates are piled. A fifth rests to the immediate right of the door. The windows in the back of the room open onto a “patio,” as Hutcheson calls it. I call it a fire escape.
Another feature of the room is a large plank of “plywood” that rests on top of two trash cans, which can be used for certain social games. This “plywood” has been autographed in bright colors by all that have played on it. Scattered around this table are a number of unmatched chairs, some of which Hutcheson found and brought to the room. One, a retro red chair, she found outside of Murphy’s and immediately rolled across the Green to the Fays.
The “plywood” has served as a central space for the group, which has changed over the past three terms with roommate turnover.
Surrounding the room’s two futons hang artwork, posters and paraphernalia from around campus. One poster, from a Movement Against Violence campaign, reads “Hook Up Responsibly.”
One wall features a framed painting that Hutcheson said mysteriously disappeared from a fraternity one night and ended up on her wall the next day. This piece is an 18th century-style painting with a gold frame, depicting men in wigs and fancy outfits. Though she’s confused about how it came into her ownership, she said she treasures the “rare print.” This was confirmed, Hutcheson said, by her mom’s friend, the head curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. These additions have accumulated since the fall, Hutcheson said, changing an empty room into a more welcoming space that almost resembles an antique store.
Despite the changeover, the six women call themselves the “Sexytet,” as magnets on one door spell out. Though Hutcheson said no one likes this nickname, it was the original name of the roommate group in room draw and has stuck ever since.
Suman Mathur ’15 lives in a completely different setup. Her quad in Richardson Hall includes a long foyer and a common area bordered by two windows with two doubles on either side. Since Mathur and her roommates have removed the blinds from the windows, the area was full of afternoon sunshine when I visited.
The common room is where the roommates hang out -— the group bought a TV in the winter so they could host Olympics parties or watch “The Mindy Project” and “Game of Thrones.” Under the TV is a black, stone fireplace, decorated with hanging and sitting glass bowls of tea lights, used for decoration during the Olympics.
A patterned rug, which Mathur received gifted from a friend’s father who no longer wanted it, covers the expanse of the room, leading to a teal futon adorned with six blue pillows. An old trunk serves as a coffee table in front of the futon, adding to the room’s quaint feeling. The bowls of candy on the table further open the room to visitors.
There is no obvious theme to the room, as Mathur said she and her roommates brought their own decorations and made it all fit together. A string of paper whales and sailboats purchased in a French paper store sprinkle the room.
The Christmas lights that line the ceiling and lamps scattered across the room help her avoid the classic fluorescent-light-glow found in most dorms.
Mathur and her roommates have lived in the dorm since winter term, and the two-term consistency motivated the group to decorate well. Mathur said she especially enjoyed the cozy and homey space in the winter.
“It was actually really nice to have a nice place to go to that wasn’t the library,” Mathur said. “It actually felt like home.”
While Mathur established a sense of home in Richardson, Karen Afre ’12 has found that living in the Tabard coed fraternity means incorporating her own personal style and identity into those of previous residents. Though her room — called “The Zoo” — is a masterpiece on its own, the entire building is full of self-expression and imagination.
Afre said residents and members of the Tabard can create their own artwork on the walls. If someone wants to paint on a white wall, there is rarely opposition.
Though one could paint over what already exists, an unspoken rule exists that the murals in her room must stay there, Afre said. Painted in the summer of 2009 by Kush Rustagi ’10, Afre’s walls feature a savannah with a sunset backdrop. The sky reaches up to the ceiling of the room, where Rustagi painted constellations.
Among the giraffes and elephants are palm trees and mushrooms, and in the corner of the room, there appears to be a flying unicorn and a floating question mark.
The other side of the room is completely different, with five stripes painted over a blue backdrop. Though the color scheme is the same as the opposing sunset, there are few other parallels.
Afre has added little to the decorations because she feels the walls should not be covered. Over the years, other trinkets have collected in the room, including strings of lights around the mural. When she leaves, Afre plans on leaving behind an old TV for future residents.
“Each room has its own culture,” Afre said. “Tabard is all about expressing yourself. [My] room represents how much people love Tabard.”
Across campus is the residence of Gabe Corso ’17, who lives in a River cluster single decorated with objects accumulated from his adventures in the past year. A “Capture the Melon” T-shirt hangs next to his desk, while an alabaster and canvas painting that his girlfriend purchased in Majorca, Spain, lies above it. A tapestry he purchased in a small town near the Great Wall hangs above his bed.
On the walls, there are a few drawings from friends who went to different places around the world,
“Having their art keeps their presence with me even if they themselves aren’t,” Corso said.
Stuck to the ceiling is a copy of the “Creation of Adam” from Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement.” Corso found it at a yard sale and thought it would be funny to hang, as the original is on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling in Vatican City.
“It would kind of feel like an asylum in here if I just had white walls,” he said. “Even though it’s temporary, this is my space for a time. It’s where I spend a lot of my time, especially since I’m all the way in the River.”
Other important features of the room include colored lights, a record player and turntable and a whiteboard. Corso said he writes his goals for the day and week on the board. The white board reminds him that he constantly wants to change his goals and thoughts. His current goals written on the board include “raise capital for South Africa,” “meditate” and “breathe.” After completing a goal, he writes “I did” on the left side of it.
“A lot of what’s in this room came to me from a significant situation or a significant event in my life, a lot of them just unprecedented or serendipitous,” Corso said. “It says a lot about the philosophy that I have, to just take chances and opportunities when they come to you and to focus on a daily energy or a daily goal.”
Corso uses his room for studying, hanging out and playing and listening to music. A self-described “audiophile,” Corso has a vinyl collection and an external hard drive with 30,000 songs.
Though he has had the same residence since the fall, he believes he will decorate his future rooms with the same careful attention to detail, regardless of the amount of time he may spend there.
