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Left: Day Hall Boys - The Quad
Living in a hallway full of your schoolmates make it hard not to become friends with them. What's better than a hallway? The quad! Day Hall is one of the dorms with quads, which are segments of the hallway where the hall splits into two to form a circle around opening to the floor below. And above this opening are skylight windows. Within this quad are four double rooms, and this allows eight people to live in even closer proximity than any hallway could. I had the privilege of having been able to live here during my junior year. Down at the end of the hall lives a faculty member and his family. Why do I say "his"? Generally, Male faculty (and their families) live in boys' dorms, while female faculty (and their families) live in the girls' dorms. During the time I was living in Day Hall, the Rivetti family lived at the end of the hall in the photo, and they were later followed by Mr. Stevens and Mrs. Stevens. Mrs. Rivetti was an example where a female teacher lived in a guy's dorm, but she also lived with her family there anyway. (I spilled hot chocolate powder in one of those light beam things lining the wall!)
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Left: Day Girls Hallway
These two photos show minor differences between hallways in two different styles of dorms. Notice that the girls' hallway ceiling in Day Hall Girls is higher than that in Silverado Girls. That's only available on the second floor, and not even Day Hall Boys gets to have those high ceilings. Also, Day Hall and Atwood have lights on the walls instead of the ceilings. Hallways are wonderful because you can just stroll down the hall when you're bored and talk to anyone or hang out with anyone. We students had curfews, even the seniors, who don't have to go to bed at 11pm, but still have to remain in their rooms. And boarding faculty would perform quick checks down the hall. Guys aren't allowed on the girls' side, except during the move-in/out days and open house.
Right: Silverado Girls Hallway
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Right: A Girl's Dorm Room
So anyway, there are single and double rooms available (no triples), and singles are reserved for seniors, who are guaranteed singles, prefects, and a few lucky non-seniors. Shown in this photo is half of a double room in Silverado, and most beds are not bunked because there's enough room for that to be unnecessary. Usually, rooms came with either bed drawers, a 4-6 drawer dresser, or both. Desks had three side drawers and a sliding tray thinger above the top drawer, and on top of the desks were the desk shelves (three levels). Some people would loft their beds on their drawers (by moving the drawers further away from each other so that the legs of the bed could rest on the drawers instead of around them), and this allowed people to place things between their beds and drawers. Of course, you'd also be sleeping higher off the ground, which some might see as a drawback. Silverado & Wilson had white blinds and up-down sliding windows. Atwood & Day had green blinds and side-side sliding windows. And each person had a closet (internally in the wall).
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Left: Homework on the Ping Pong Table
(Sorry about the blurry photo)
Yes, people are doing homework on the ping pong table in the common room. This is the Day Hall common room, the only one with a ping pong table. The common room never had a ping pong table before, and it wasn't the school that provided it. An awesome friend of mine named Charmaine Li bought the ping pong table for the common room, and it sparked a school-wide craze for ping pong, especially during the first year. The ping pong table was frequently played on, and when it wasn't, it was often used as a general table for special dorm dinners and even homework. The ping pong table became the center of the entire common room, and even Day Hall Boys and Girls. The ping pong table served Day Hall for two or three years before being moved into the Student Center game room. I was saddened when the ping pong table was moved away from Day Hall Commons during my last days at Stevenson. The common room looked so empty and dead without it. It was probably one of the greatest things that happened to resident life at Stevenson.
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Right: One Third of the Day Hall Commons
(Sorry about the blurry photo)
Yes, I emphasize that this is only one third of the Day Hall Common Room. The second third (beyond the left edge of the photo) had a large coffee table with chairs and couches, and these were situated around the large fireplace. The third third (even further beyond the left edge of the photo) was the section behind the fireplace wall, and it had a TV room that was almost always in use. The first two thirds of the common room was two-stories high, and the girls' and boys' sides both had upstairs openings that peered down into the common room below. The common rooms were the joining points of the boys' and girls' sides, and the faculty on duty for both sides would be on opposite sides of the common room, next to each of their entrances (to the guys' and girls' sides). Check-ins and check-outs between dorms and in and out of the campus, if you followed that rule, were done through the faculty on duty in these common rooms. The common rooms were almost always busy (and loud). People would be playing ping pong while others socialized while others did homework while others watched TV. The Atwood and Day Hall common rooms were alike, while the Wilson and Silverado common rooms were alike in their slightly different way. During school hours, the day students were supposedly not allowed in the dorms or common rooms, and the common rooms were generally a lot less active during those hours anyway.
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Left: Blackout
Even during blackouts, like this one in December 2002, didn't stop the activity of the resident students. People would hang out around the fireplace, talking, trying to read, making up games, or playing card games. It gave us the cozy-fire-in-the-dark-winter-night kind of feel, and that was very nice. Experiences from resident life at Stevenson are truly a treasure.
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-Gordon Mei, September 25, 2004.
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