We’re All Living With a PlyLok

What can carry the weight of a truck but should not be stood on, moves without changing location, and falls if you drape a heavy coat over it?Princeton’s dorm room desk chair.The University purchased 6,126 PlyLok models from Sauder Education since 2000, according to a company spokesperson. The chair’s price depends on how many are purchased in bulk. Princeton’s rate is confidential.You probably never saw one before freshman move-in, but have since noticed this curious piece of furniture in dingy dorm rooms everywhere. At least ten other schools across the country – including the University of California at Berkeley, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Chicago and Yale University – equip their dorm rooms with a version of the three-position chair.Princeton’s model is made of beech wood, upholstered in either dark red or grey fabric, and can adopt three different seating positions. Although the positions are distinguished through slight angles in the chair’s curved base, it can easily tip from one position to another.(Hence its name: the “three-position chair.” Yes, it does sound vaguely sexual.)Four of them can carry a truck:And the chair can also be tossed out of a three-story building:[video width="480" height="352" mp4="http://www.universitypressclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/The-Legend-of-PlyLok-1.mp4"][/video]Courtesy of Sauder EducationSauder Education, New England Woodcraft and University Loft Co. produce models of the chair with slight variations. At Yale, the chair only has two positions. At the University of Chicago, it does not have upholstery.Student complaints about the chair’s sudden tipping, however, are largely uniform. Posts on the subject garnered thousands of views and hundreds of comments on Quora and Reddit.Sauder is one of the chair’s pioneers. Founded in 1934, the company began rebuilding the woodwork of a recently burned church in Northwest Ohio, and went national in 1940. Sauder aimed to “stay at the forefront of changing church trends” according to its website, and launched Sauder Education a few years later to serve colleges and universities across the country.The three-position PlyLok chair was born in 1989. Wood scraps from the chair’s production are either ground into sawdust and used as animal bedding for local farmers, or burned to power Sauder’s factories – producing zero wood waste, according to a Sauder spokesperson.Princeton senior Nicole Marvin said she was confused by the chair’s rocking property.“It very much unsettled me freshman year,” Marvin said on a sofa in her Spelman Hall living room. “It’s not a very attractive piece of furniture, but I’m not going to bash a chair that’s given to me for free. I guess it probably looks good on paper.”According to Sauder, the chair has a “waterfall contoured seat and contoured back” offering “exceptional sitting comfort and support,” as well as “plybent hardwood frame components with mortise and tenon joint construction” for “superior stability and durability.” Sounds like a pretty good deal.Jin Chow, also a senior, said she likes to work with her legs crossed, causing the chair to rock forward unexpectedly.“I always get these mini heart attacks when I shift my weight,” Chow said, adding that she routinely stomps on her own foot with the curved base. She is also puzzled by the rocking function.“Why pretend to be relaxed when we go to one of the most stressful schools in the world?”Anne Kelley, a freshman at UChicago, wrote that her three-position chair is sturdy and relatively comfortable.“The chair rocks. Don’t stand on the chair. Many people fall off the chair when standing atop it…The chair is, in fact, a nice chair.”“It’s like a rite of passage for all freshmen to almost die on them,” Lisa Wong, a senior at North Carolina State University, wrote in a Facebook message.While the chair’s popularity on college campuses may stem from its durability, 2016 Brown University graduate Henry Chaisson said he thinks the chair was made for tippers.“I don’t think they’re designed to be comfortable,” the music major said in a phone call from his Lower East Side office. “I think they’re designed to remove liability for colleges.”Chaisson said that he has always been a tipper – he enjoys leaning back in chairs.“There’s kind of a stigma to it, which is understandable because it’s dangerous.”Tired of constantly being rebuked for his behavior in high school, he was “elated” when he discovered the three-position chair at Brown.“I think these chairs are basically genius.”Whatever your thoughts about it, the three-position PlyLok has rocked many a student through their Princeton career. I think it deserves its own legend.-AW