Word: roomful
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Choosing a Room. Make a reasoned, conservative estimate of the number of students likely to enroll in your course, then secure a room capable of holding two-thirds that quantity. Don't attempt to substitute guesswork for arithmetic here, as a larger room will make students feel too important, and a smaller one may drive them away. At the first meeting, inform your overflow crowd that it will be possible to admit only a small fraction thereof; then ask each applicant to submit a brief autobiography plus a 25-word statement on the subject "Why I'm anxious to take...
...coal cellar the Registrar's Office has assigned you, to Emerson 105 (or the Geological Lecture Hall), thus enabling you to admit every student who came on Monday and thensome. It is common form, at this second meeting, to express contempt for the building's impersonal architecture and the room's awesome size. No explanation is required for the decision to accept all your applicants, save to say you found choosing among them impossible...
Some have said the physical world of the dorms is made for moles. The visual environment is constricting. Single rooms are laid out on either side of long hallways covered with travel posters and yellowing cartoons. Most rooms are divided among two occupants, two radios and a record player. Everything is horizontal except the people, but they are what we are trying to get away from. People are everywhere, just hanging around. The sense of being under observation is so strong it sometimes seems the hallways are tunnels hung with rolling eyeballs. There are no free distances for the eyes...
...while the girl who lives on the third floor of Moors must remain relatively still as she sits with her roommate or creeps from room to room anp space to space, things and people converge around her. Possessions flow from person to person getting broken and lost as they move, a letter comes from abroad and has its stamp ripped off before the addressee sees it, daily events like meals and the arrival of Gordon linen march blindly on, compulsory dorm meetings are held, toilets flushed, people talk. The individual girl has no control over events or time, can start...
...young frail looking freshman stood on the steps of Houghton Library and clutched his cop of "don Quixote" in his hand. He thought for a minute of the blaring rock and roll that his roommates were playing back at his room stared at the heavy wooden doors of the library, then pushed them open and walked inside. The attendant looked up from his desk. "Is there someplace here where I can read?" the boy asked, fingering the book in his hand...