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| Why housing at Bennington is more "home" than "dorm" (Part 1) |
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The fireplace in the living room. Waking up to a sweeping view of lush green mountains. Knowing you can find someone else to watch sci-fi movies, philosophize over nachos, or take a walk with at any hour of the day. Reveling in band practice at midnight—or in 24-hour peace and quiet. The roommate who’s always ready to listen, and the spirited house community that cracks jokes all through the weekly house meeting. The five-minute walk to meals or to class. The things that Bennington students love about their houses are as varied as the students themselves. Housing is personal at Bennington—students live not in massive dorms, but in houses of about 30 people each, a mixture of single and double rooms, with kitchens and comfy common areas. Every house is different (more on that in a moment), but here’s what you can expect no matter what house you live in:
From there, you’ll find a lot of “customization.” Each house has its particular quirks and perks: a porch with a swing, a piano in the living room, funky architecture or décor, great views of fields or mountains. Each has a set of agreed-upon community rules: some houses allow smoking, and some don’t; some have quiet hours, some allow a ruckus at any hour, and all are considered “courtesy houses,” where you and your neighbor can both go about your business but respect each other’s requests to keep it down when necessary. The personality of each house is not so much a set of fixed properties as a rich and colorful blend of the people who live there each year. It’s easier to show than describe—so here are a few stories from current students and recent grads about their experiences living in community at Bennington. The Basics: Making it Homey Genevieve Belleveau ’07 and Alex Ward ’07 have lived in the same room in Welling since their first year at Bennington. With hardwood floors and a stately living room, it’s a house rich with history. “During one alumni weekend,” Genevieve says, “this seventy-year old woman knocked on the door and said, ‘I used to live here.’” Welling is a colonial house—one of the original houses built in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the College first opened. Each was built with two stories and an attic for trunks. Today, Bennington has a total of eighteen houses—the original twelve which make up First and Second Street; the Barnes houses (or, as students have dubbed them, the “70s houses”) which boast innovative angles, skylights at the center, and laundry rooms downstairs; and the “new houses,” erected in 2001. A house with set quiet hours, Welling sits at the very end of Second Street, facing the mountains to the south. “I love it,” Genevieve says. “It was great our first couple of terms—people were so chill and low key, and I loved that. I would go other places if I wanted to be social. But now Welling is social in its own right.” “We have tea parties,” Alex adds. “Our friend Audrey does tea parties on Tuesday nights.” Both consider Welling to be a place of respect and support. Genevieve says Welling’s noise guidelines are “very much about just communicating with your neighbors. I don’t even know when the quiet hours are. But you just talk to each other, because that’s the atmosphere.”
Starting with that basic combination, there’s a lot you can do to make your room homey and personalized, even on a tight budget. Genevieve and Alex are accomplished thrift store shoppers; pointing to an oddly elegant lamp in the shape of a woman, Genevieve says, “That lady came from an abandoned house. Most is from Salvation Army, Goodwill, costume shops, prop shops.” They have also arranged and rearranged their furniture, discovered giant closets next door, and created a “porch” (a picnic table dragged up beside the windowsill) outside one of their windows. Check in over the next few weeks for more House Stories, with the lowdown on quiet houses, loud houses, quirks and perks, fun house events, and the roommate experience. And don’t miss the fourth and final week in the series, when we’ll look at Welling Town House, Bennington’s co-op house—a haven for organic community living, where students share the cooking and enjoy a backyard herb-and-vegetable garden. More housing stories:
More about life on campus:
Click here to read more stories about Bennington.
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| Bennington College One College Drive, Bennington, Vermont 05201 802-442-5401[tel] |
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In addition to watching Welling evolve over the past four years, Genevieve and Alex have also shown how much you can change the personality of a room. All Bennington rooms come with a standard set of furniture that includes a bed, mattress, bureau, desk, chair, and mirror (one of each for a single, two of each for a double). Many also include bookcases, and all have a wardrobe or closet.
