Residential College Review: Whitman Edition

Ah, Whitman, the newest of them all, whose neo-Gothic arches and towers we owe to erstwhile eBay honcho/gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman '77. From an aerial view, the college forms a "W", said to be in her honor (definitely apocryphal). It's no eyesore from the outside. Though Whitman does seem to be aping the time-earned classiness of, say, Rocky -- it's all like "hay look I'm 4 years old but I can be castle-y and majestic too" -- it's a pretty nice-looking crib overall. And there are some nice things on the inside, too.  I'll be quick to admit, the Whitman experience is an overwhelmingly positive one. But I've still got some pretty serious reservations about the place. It looks good on the surface, but under that perfect veneer there's something's just a little ... off. If that's cryptic, good -- I'll take you through the usual tour, and then I'll explain myself more clearly when we get to the end, because, suspense, or something.The résumé:Laundry: Thanks to ridiculously generous laundry room distribution, no matter where you live the nearest washing machine won't lie more than a hallway's length away -- you'll be grateful that you don't have to clamber up and down stairs with a hamperful of misery. But because of the easy access, these rooms are always busy, so to guarantee yourself an open machine you'll often have to make the arduous (ok, elevator-assisted) trudge to the 1981 basement, where you'll find a wondrous array of washers and dryers.Kitchen: Like the laundry rooms, they're sprinkled throughout, usually two to a floor, and they've got all the usual amenities: fridge, stove, oven, microwave, requisite filthy dishes, etc.  Since they're fairly cramped and devoid of any homey ambiance, the kitchens don't make for particularly good study or social spaces -- I never visited them except to raid someone's fresh batch of cookies (note: easily sniffed out from afar). Be careful what you cook, though, because air circulation tends to, uh, share your creations with everyone in the vicinity. My freshman year, someone managed to stank up all four floors of 1981 with the thick reek of five-spice. This happened on a regular basis. I will never forgive you, O anonymous purveyor of Asian cuisine.Computers: Printers on every floor is a godsend, but for usable computers you'll have to venture to Whitman Library. (We'll deal with that place in a second.)What's in the neighborhood: Kind of a down-campus hub, so though classes can be a hike, meals at nearby WuCox and Forbes are convenient, as are workouts at Dillon Gym or visits with Spelman pals. Whitman also seems to sit on the mathematical midpoint between the Wa and Studio 34, meaning you can satiate your late-night munchies in whichever direction you see fit (hot hoagie <====> French bread pizza). Poe Field's not too far away either, which is nice because you'll quickly find that Whitman courtyards are good for picturesque promotional photographs, but worthless for any kind of sporting (too sloped, too many dang pathways). Come winter though, the "Whitman Hill" is the most desirable sledding spot on campus. Soon as the white stuff lands, grab a tray from the dining ha--er, some legal, University-approved form of sled, get a running start, and coast.Bugs and pests: Still new, so it seems like the bugs haven't yet figured out how to infiltrate yet -- maybe a stinkbug here and there, nothing of note.Library: There are study rooms on every floor, but other options too, should you want to escape your hallway. The dining hall moonlights as a nice study area anytime between dinner and breakfast (free snacks too!). Then there's also Whitman Library, which I've previously described in these pages as a "dimly-lit den of stress and dark wood," and I'll stand by that. It's popular real estate for night-time studiers, and though the computers are usually unoccupied, it can be hard to secure desk space. Also the epicenter of some pretty serious academic crises, especially during times of widespread distress, like Dean's Date or thesis season (photo evidence). This library houses no books, which is why I can with a straight face suggest that it be officially renamed to "Whitman Dimly-Lit Den of Stress and Dark Wood."Noise levels/partying: Likely due to a solidly central location and spacious quads, Whitman hosts its fair share of pregames. Walls are paper-thin, so act accordingly. Meaning, wait until your roommate is out the door and at least halfway down the hallway before you badmouth him (purely hypothetical) or ransack his stash of dried seaweed snacks, because he'd probably hear the plastic crackling (not hypothetical).What's on the floor: Dark hardwood, demurely matte.Other perks:

• Five-room quads, with square footage bordering on blasphemy. That these rooms exists while the Forbes Addition exists is a pretty exquisitve kind of injustice. Easily some of the nicest pads on campus. (Underclassmen, suppress your fantasies for now, because these are without fail snatched up by seniors every year.)
• You can get pretty much anywhere in Whitman without stepping outdoors (unless you live in Fisher Hall, which is an island unto itself). Especially valuable during winter or episodes of extreme laziness, when you'll want to stroll through brunch in your PJs, not your heavy coat.
• Whitman boasts the single most desirable piece of res. college gear: neon tanks inspired by benefactor Meg (see left).
• Tuesday dinners are special meals that only Whitman residents can attend, known as "College Nights." To Whitmanites, that translates to: slightly improved food, themed decorations, less crowds, intra-college bonding. For everyone else, that translates to: an inscrutable weekly ritual of exclusivity. Haters gonna hate!
• Air conditioning. You can control how warm or cold you want your room to be. Most people will not be able to do this. Savor it. On balmy April nights, snuggle up smugly with the cool side of your pillow while your up-campus analogue is sweating away furiously.

What it will look like on moving day: A soulless husk waiting to be occupied by a warm body. Um, I mean, empty.Bathrooms: Hall bathrooms. Clean, nondescript.The food: Draws crowds, but it's nothing special. Plenty of people enjoy the hot entrees, but I almost entirely avoided them for 2 years, sticking to the boring but serviceable combo of salad bar + grill fare. Fortunately, Whitman's location allows for calorically crucial meal pilgrimages to WuCox (best pizza and dope vegetarian options) and, when desperate, Forbes.THE INTANGIBLES: Here at last. These are all super-subjective, so it's possible that they're just my own weirdly specific impressions, but hear me out on this.So, what's "off" about this place? To put it bluntly: Whitman feels kind of soulless. I suspect that evil things are lurking behind all the dark wood paneling. I suspect that the college itself is somehow draining me of me of my lifeblood. A lot of this, I speculate, has to do with the oddly enervating dim lighting. Someone somewhere along the way decided that Whitmanites needed 24/7 "mood lighting" everywhere -- in rooms, in the dining hall, in hallways. To walk around Whitman is to feel trapped in a state of perpetual dusk. The ambiance is better suited to enjoying a candlelit dinner than grinding out a problem set. (Lighting definitely deserves at least partial blame for the many times I've fallen asleep doing the latter.) So invest in a desk lamp, and get out into the sun and/or normally-lit parts of campus as much as possible.On a more meaningful level, the soullessness also has to do with the unfortunate layout. Unlike the other residential colleges, Whitman is dominated by singles. So, where to chill with others? Perhaps the common rooms on every floor? Nope, those are criminally underused, because they aren't inviting -- they've got doors, and thus don't feel like rooms you can casually stroll into. There's a game room, but that's usually a ghost town. On the whole, there are no good communal spaces, nowhere really to just hang out and bump into other people who also happen to be hanging out. With that in mind, I'd nudge Whitmanites to be especially socially proactive, because the layout really just isn't conducive to the kinds of random encounters or casual socialization that people love to glorify over at Forbes, Where Everybody Knows Your Name.I've been told I've got an overly perceptive nose, but I think most people would agree with me here: Whitman smells pretty peculiar. I'm not referring to specific instances, like the fivespice-terrorist -- the place just smells weird, all the time. Warm weather apparently causes plumbing malfunctions, which yield some interesting septic fragrances in the springtime. But for the most part, the scents are ambiguous, untraceable, seeming to emanate from the very walls and floors and ceilings. It smells bad and you won't know why. When you live in Whitman long enough, you grow desensitized to its olfactory assault -- you're only reminded when friends visit from other res. colleges, or when you return from a long vacation. In fact, the only truly positive smell-related memory I have  of Whitman is this one time when I came back from winter break and the air was inexplicably suffused with a syrupy French toast aroma.Wanna know the most soulless part about it? The dining hall is officially called "Community Hall." Wait, that doesn't sound too bad. Presumably it refers to the Princeton community, or, even more heart-warmingly, the Whitman community, right? No. It refers to the "eBay community." I kid you not. So as a mild linguistic form of civil disobedience, I refuse to call it that. I will call it Whitman Dining Hall. Dear eBay, no matter how sweet the pair of Nikes I ordered off you two weeks ago, or how satisfying the bounty of Magic: The Gathering cards you helped me acquire 9 years ago, I won't let your ghost linger over my every meal. Sincerely, Whitmanite Who Has Evidently Spent A Little Too Much Time Thinking About His Dorm.