MEHLER | The Importance of Fine Art in the Dormitory Experience

As Cornell now requires sophomores to live in on-campus housing, more students will spend their second year at Cornell in the West Campus houses, the new dorms within the North Campus Residential Expansion and in the heart of Collegetown in South Campus. While many may lament forgoing off-campus and being forced into dorms, there remains plenty of opportunity to personalize the Cornellian living space. By no means am I encouraging students to violate Cornell’s housing policies regarding tapestries, flags and anything else that may violate fire code. However, creativity finds its home in constrained spaces with limited coverage of common rooms and bedrooms permitted. I wish to share just some of the fine art that composed my friends’ and my Hans Bethe dorm for our sophomore and junior years.

DO | The Sophomore Slump (Class of 2024 Edition)

“The part of my brain that indulged in the isolation is constantly at odds with my own worries about leaving Cornell without a close group of friends. In-person classes were supposed to be the shot of adrenaline that my social life needed, but the reality is turning out to be something different. Everyone’s talking about how great it is to be back on campus, but for plenty of sophomores, there’s not much to come back to.”