<p>This was written by one of the students for the class of '08</p>
<p>As a disclaimer, this is just one
person's experience in the dorm, and by no means do I claim you'll experience
everything or that this will be the extent of your experience. Your college
experience is <em>your</em> college experience. So, with that...</p>
<p>A little background and description:<br>
Mary Lyon is a former girl's school building bought by Swarthmore and turned
into a dorm. It has 3 above ground floors and a basement level that was
renovated in the summer of 2002 (believe me, it was pretty nasty before
that). The floors are connected by two inside staircases and two staircases
on the outside, one of which is a fire escape. Each floor is co-ed,
traditionally with guys on one side of the hall and girls on the other. This
arrangement is due to the wonderful fact of ML's suite bathrooms- in normal
cases there are 4 students of the same gender that share a bathroom connecting
two rooms. The halls are carpeted, while the rooms are I think varnished wood
floor. However, the aforementioned only applies on the above-ground floors. </p>
<p>The first floor houses mostly freshmen, and is one of the smaller halls: it's
about one third the size of the two floors above it. This is because the rest
of the floor contains the spacious main lounge, the small computer room, the
large breakfast room, and the main kitchen. I guess I'll start with occupancy
first, though: The only upperclassmen rooms are the RA, the "fishbowl", which
houses 3 people, and a remote double across from the breakfast room area.<br>
Because of this, the hall has more of an advantage in group activities, like
going to dinner together. A word of warning: bathrooms on this hall face the
driveway and ML is a building with plenty of windows. Mind the people passing
by and pull the shades.</p>
<p>As for the other parts of the first floor: The lounge comes with couches, a
small cable TV, and is usually the place of studying, study breaks, and random
games, whether it's Wink, full contact red light green light, or some variant
of Soul Calibur. Of course, this depends on dorm occupants, but the dorm
atmosphere is usually one that encourages activities open to the whole dorm.<br>
This is all reflected in the games, the walks to dinner together, and even
usual tables that ML'ers eat at. Getting back on track, the computer room (as
of this writing) has two Macs and one PC as well as the printer. (Just
reminding everyone now that printing at Swat is free and you can connect your
computers to the dorm printer through the network. Just watch the paper,
please.) The Breakfast Room will be described in its own section. Cause it's
just that special.</p>
<p>The second floor has 3 wings, 2 side wings and a center section. The
center section and the right wing (just geographically, folks, Swat's still a
liberal place) house upperclassmen while the 3rd section contains freshmen.<br>
The freshmen wing also has the hall lounge, which is connected to the fire
escape. Special features of this hall are its two barn doubles and the
quint. The two barn doubles are a few of the biggest rooms on campus; alas,
they are not available to frosh. But keep that in mind when doing the
lottery, eh? The quint is located opposite the barn doubles, and is two
doubles and a single that share a bathroom. Once again, nice and spacey.</p>
<p>The third floor is a lot like the second floor, and so probably gets short
shrift in this description. Sorry. Once again, about 1/3rd of its occupants
are frosh. The other side of the hall has a small, respectable lounge and
also a tiny kitchen area.</p>
<p>Rooms:
The rooms themselves are really comparable to the ones on campus, if not
larger. You might want to bring some rugs or something for the floors, as the
regular wooden floor gets dusty and occasionally leaves varnish/whatever it is
flakes. There's also usually a mirror hanging from the wall or on the closet
door, and like all rooms on campus, a bed, bookshelf, drawer, desk, chair,
telephone, and closet area per student is provided. Heating wise, heat
throughout the building is done by the radiators (somewhat inconveniently)
located in each room. Warning: these can be somewhat noisy. And noises can
be scary. And as a rule for dorm heating, sometimes it just plain isn't up to
par. Note well that also the building has no system of cooling, so you'll
haveta resort to opening the windows. Unless you're into sweating some
pounds, bring a fan. Really.</p>
<p>The Breakfast Room:
The Breakfast Room and accompanying kitchen is the dining hall of ML,
furnished with some couches, an enormous wooden table, a microwave, and iron
cow (ok, so it's just a square milk dispenser, but that's what it is.)<br>
There's also an old upright piano, but as it's usually out of tune, musically
unresponsive, and obnoxious to residents above and below and nearby, it's
generally not touched so much. But I digress. The Breakfast Room allows ML
residents the chance to eat breakfast in the dorm, and also employs a small
number of students as cooks. Yes! You can work there! Usual breakfasts have
hot and cold food available- a rotating choice of french toast, eggs with
options, or variable pancakes for hot, and bagels, bread, cereal, muffins, etc
for cold. You still have to spend a meal credit, but it saves you the trouble
of trekking to campus for breakfast if you don't want to. Usual hours of
service are from 7:30-9 am, with workers working from 7-9:30 am from Monday-
Friday, and serving 8:30am-1pm working 8-2pm on Saturdays. Hey, it's top pay
scale, you get to cook, and get to see people. It's not a bad job. </p>
<p>In the greater scheme of things:
ML, yes, is the farthest dorm away from campus. In the greater perspective,
where some students have to shuttle from on part of a university campus to
another just for class, it's really not that bad. But in the small Swat
bubble, this is probably the biggest challenge for MLers. Located across the
street from Strath Haven condominiums (which houses upperclassmen sometimes,
and a lot of, um, elderly folks not associated with Swat), people can expect
usually a walk of at least 7 minutes from the dining hall that is Sharples,
and about 15-20 minutes from the main iconic hall of Parrish. Yeah. That's
somewhat of a pain, but it's not bad. You can cut down times by bringing a
bike, but it's not a must, and time always passes more quickly when walking
with friends. On the plus side: hey, you get more exercise than students
living on campus, those slackers, and it's a great way to learn time
management when you realize a trip to campus for one purpose and then back
will take you about 40 minutes. And you'll know where the Activities Center
(home to Aikido and Folk Dance at the time of this writing) and Athletic
buildings are. And hey, you get to live in ML. On the other hand, time is
precious, you can't hop over to another dorm quickly, you might not care about
the exercise, and who gives a flip about where those buildings are? Ok,
really, it's all in how you look at it. Perspective, baby, perspective.
As a side note, if you do bring a bike, rest assured that there are plenty of
bike racks on campus. </p>
<p>::whine:: That's too far/It's too much walking/I'm lazy/Whatever:
Ok, ok. A shuttle service, driven by your fellow students, is also available,
running from Parrish circle to PPR (the other satellites that happen to be
closer) to ML and back. In the morning a shuttle runs every 15 minutes from
7:30-9:30am, while nights are 6-3 am (5-3 daylight savings hours) going every
10 minutes from 9pm-12am and every 20 minutes other times. Now, keep in mind
that these are other students driving your shuttles, so while we're all
grateful, it also means that the shuttles can be unreliable, and sometimes
you'll just have to walk it. (Also, consequently, there's that issue of
SNOW. Which many people can't drive in. So bring boots.)</p>
<p>Atmosphere:
So I've gone on and on and on about ML itself, but really, what about living
there? Well, I'd like to think that it's really a nice place to live.<br>
Sometimes it gets described as the bubble within the Swarthmore bubble, but
really, the distance has had some positive influences as well. It's not
unusual to know many of the people within the dorm from each hall, and a lot
of fun activities go on, and it's not hard to navigate around the building
once you realize it's in a big "L" shape. A lot of opportunities bring the
dorm together, like eating meals together, the chance to cook together with
not one but two functional kitchens, and walking back and forth from campus,
and games, and general commiseration of being students, etc- so really, those
chances are all there if you make yourself available. You'll find people
passionate in there interests anywhere in Swat and the residents of ML won't
be any different- the movies they love, the TV shows, their activities, their,
uh, card games... That said, living in any dorm by no means dictates your
social life. It's quite possible to stay on campus all day with your friends
there and then just sleep in your room and start the day over again, and
there's nothing wrong with that. It's all a matter of personal choice, but
the only way you'll really feel isolated in ML or anywhere is if you decide to
hole up in the room yourself</p>