The overhead projectors broke down. The videotapes were stretched and fuzzy. The plastic seats in the Brian Gerrard Theatre made your butt go numb. Some of the photos of students on the school website haven’t changed since 1999. The blocks were T, C, H, A and D, and no one knew why. There was a leak in the music storeroom ceiling. The current principal has been the principal since 1986.
Groups claimed spots around the school and kept them for five years. My old school friends still sometimes refer to each other as the T Block gang. For five whole years, you could walk to a particular spot and know you’d find particular people. The layout of the school encouraged us to cleave. (I mean cleave as in “stick fast to”, not as is “split or sever”).
Everybody was somebody.
In a school of 1000 people, it was pretty easy to be somebody, to find a place you fit (and stay there).
In a university of 30-40,000 students, how can everybody possibly be somebody?
The answer is they can’t, and even if they could they should do it elsewhere. Or if you have to do it here, for God’s sake do it quietly.
The university is designed to keep you moving. I notice this especially in Arts 1, probably because a lot of my classes are there. For the last few months before the new and improved Arts 1 opened, everyone seemed to be talking with much excitement about the common room, ‘with wifi’ (we were told), and I had visions of all us English students congregating there and loudly discussing books and shit.
No common room materialised (tbh I’m a little bit outraged).
There are couch things, sure but they either line walls or are huge circular unmoveable things. Congregating is discouraged. Sitting quietly and reading and avoiding eye contact with the person next to you is okay.
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