On The Ground
Stakes and Mistakes
February 8th: A silence befalls Rudolph Hall regarding Trump’s proposed mandate to “Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again”. Is this silence indicative that students have grown significantly out of touch with politics? Are we so gaslit that we just can’t imagine this isn’t fake news? …Or an indication of a growing appreciation for the neo-gothic? (Quick reminder that the classical studio was an overwhelming favorite at this semester’s advanced studio lottery). Given our president’s ‘taste,’ we’ll be on the lookout for mid-term models plastered in gold leaf, or hastily contoured with Cheeto dust.
February 11th: Third-years on travel week receive an email about an upcoming presentation on “Student Loan Repayment Strategies”. Suddenly, the “free” trip to Amsterdam feels a little less special.
February 12th: Overheard in the fourth-floor kitchen: “How many co-living advance studio students does it take to clean a microwave?”
February 13th: Second-years release the tension from their travel-week FOMO with an EXTRA-loud game of badminton in an eerily vacant fourth-floor pit.
February 14th: A third of the student body’s Instagram stories saturate with photos from Johannesburg, Paris and Rome, while another third features captions about romantic Valentine’s dates with their BP groups.
February 18th: Students in the Copenhagen studio are heard complaining about a week of cold and rain while the Mexico City and Brazil studios compare their tans. First and second-years bite their tongues.