Alyssa Salemi

Browning

ENGL 160

Exploring the Residence Halls of UIC

           The residence halls at UIC are arguably the busiest places on campus.  Students make their ways through the maze of hallways, hauling book bags and laundry baskets teeming with a month worth of dirty clothes.  As you approach the dorm rooms, music echoes down the hallways.  The shrieks and laugher of the residents are always roaring from the lounges.  Each door is decorated with the names of the room's occupants, and some include personal touches, like dry erase boards. The halls are always crowded with students making their ways from bed, to class, and back again.  But despite the traffic, I find a sense of friendliness in these buildings.
     The first thing I noticed about the residence halls when I moved into courtyard a few weeks ago is the astounding complexity of the buildings.  Several buildings are linked together by bridges that can only be accessed on the second floor.  Each building has a lot of stories.  The building's utilities (such as laundry rooms, trash rooms, and lounges) seem scattered about in an entirely unorganized fashion.  For a new student the residence halls can be overwhelming.
     The first step I took to mastering my way around the buildings was getting to know the names and abbreviations for each.  Commons North (CMN), Commons South (CMS), Commons West (CMW), and Courtyard (CTY) are all connected.  James Strukel Towers (JST) and Marie Robinson Hall (MRH) are located a few blocks down from the other buildings.  Once I was familiarized with the locations of each hall, the buildings didn't seem quite as intimidating, and I was able to explore the details of each on-campus house.
     CMN, CMS, CMW, and CTY are all relatively unimpressive looking buildings.  They stretch out across a large area on campus, beginning at the corner of Harrison and Halsted.  The outside is mostly paved, with a few trees and bushes scattered about the perimeter.  The light orange brick on these residence halls make them easy to recognize amongst the other buildings on campus.  Students are often congregating outside on the benches to smoke cigarettes or chat between classes. 

Commons South

    JST looks clean and new.  It towers over Rochford Street with floors stacked up as high as thirteen stories.  The bright orange brick and teal windows make it hard to miss.  Marie Robinson Hall also looks modern.  Because it's located on Maxwell Street, it is surrounded by shops and cafes.  In fact, it's located directly above a Caribou Cafe! 

James Strukel Towers

     While most of the traffic seen in these locations is by students, working staff is also present in the halls.  The crew that is responsible for keeping the residence halls clean have a challenging task.  The garbage cans in the hallways are overflowing with pizza boxes and aluminum cans.  Wrappers and gum speckle the stained carpeting.  I find myself pitying the staff for having to clean up the mess of inconsiderate college students, but I am always impressed by the hard work they put forth to keep the environment clean.  They demonstrated their diligence one day on the bridge from Commons West to Courtyard during a rainstorm.  The hallway's ceiling was leaking water and dampening the carpet, creating an awful musty scent.  The employees treated the leak in no time and did the best job they could at removing the water from the carpet.  Unfortunately, the smell still remains.

     The most remarkable thing about the halls is the sense of comfort the residents seem to have there.  Many students haven't lived in the halls long and are not used to living without the resources they had back home, but it seems they have managed to make a home here at UIC. While observing a group of students in the cafeteria at John Strukel Towers, I was invited over to talk.  I made acquaintances with a few girls who live at JST.  One girl who was sprawled out over two chairs picking at a slice of pizza described her experience living in the hall; "I have enough microwave meals to last me a lifetime and I finally figured out how to work a washing machine.  I don't think I'm ever going back home!"
     The history of this school is emulated in the residence halls.  In 1965, the mayor of Chicago offered the Harrison and Halsted location to the Chicago Circle campus.  It was previously located at Navy Pier, and largely and commuter school.  The mayor chose this location because it is easily accessible to commuters through the blue line, nearby expressways, and bus stops.  In 1982, the Chicago Circle campus merged with the U of I medical Center campus, forming UIC.  The school slowly began expanding it's population of students with a desire to live on campus; in order to accommodate the students, more residence halls were built.  The most recent addition to housing is JST, constructed in 2005.
     Elements of UIC's mission statement were also verified during my visit to the halls.  It's statement, "To provide a wide range of students with the educational opportunity only a leading research university can offer," was especially apparent as I examined the students in the halls.  I found many residents of many races and cultures.  In a short period of time I witnessed students wearing crosses around their necks, some wearing turbans, and others with yamakas.  I even overheard several conversations in foreign languages.
     What does this mean for a UIC student?  This school is a friendly environment, built with it's students best interests in mind.  The feeling of neighborliness I experienced in these buildings was refreshing, and its diversity is able to provide all students with both a sense of home and an opportunity to explore other cultures.

My Responses to Other Blogs :

     I've come to view the University of Illinois at Chicago as a diverse campus, teeming with reminders of its past.  Each building on campus signifies the incredible expansion UIC has undergone since moving to its current location in 1965.  Whether doing paperwork in the Student Services building, sipping coffee in University Hall, or navigating around the Behavioral Sciences Building, UIC's goals are reflected in its environment.  While this campus does have its negatives, my view of this school has become increasingly fond since my exploration of the various neighborhoods it contains.
     You may ask yourself, what is so historically significant about a campus that is relatively new and still being added on to?  The buildings on the Harrison and Halsted location of UIC are no more than 47 years old.  The University of Illinois in Chicago didn't become the institution we know today until even more recently, when the Chicago Circle campus merged with the University of Illinois Medical District thirty years ago!  So why does this make a difference to students and to the neighborhood surrounding UIC?  The mayor of Chicago offered this location to the Chicago Circle campus because it was looking to expand its population of student residents.  At the time this location was home to many historically and culturally significant locations, like Greek Town, Pilson, Maxwell Street, and the Hull House.  While many of these places were destroyed to make way for the construction of residence halls and classrooms, some of the history still remains.  The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum is located a few steps outside of the East Area Office, Greek Town is a couple blocks down Halsted Street, and Pilsen is easy accessible by bus or a short walk down Harrison.  While much of the history here was unfortunately destroyed due to the placement of this campus, the students here are privileged to be able to be enjoy what has been preserved.  And speaking of preservation, it's interesting to know that not every building on campus was specifically constructed for UIC.  According to the "Time to Explore! Student Services Building" blog by Nicole Galvin, SSB (or the Student Services Building) was originally a mall!  The University bought the mall and transformed it into the strange maze of offices we know today!  And as for the computer lab at SSB?  The brown tile floor might look familiar if you visit a lot of fast food restaurants- that's right, the lab was once a Burger King.

The Jane Addams Hull-House

     Viet Phan's "Area 2" blog addresses a problem I think every student on campus has faced at one time or another.  Navigating around this school can be quite a challenge.  The layout of some buildings is quite maze-like; it's most common to be confused when entering the Behavioral Sciences Building, the Architecture Building, and the
Science & Engineering South Building.  In Klaritza Rojas' "Blog Post for Neighborhood Eight" she discusses how the layout of each building is very different from the next on the inside, but the outside of many of these buildings are unique so it is easy to locate them if you know what they look like.  Both of the blogs seem to agree that in time the campus become much less scary and more welcoming and familiar, which is something I've also come to learn throughout my stay at UIC.  This point also seems to coencide with a section of UIC's mission statement that reads "to address the challenges and opportunities facing not only Chicago but all Great Cities of the 21st century, as expressed by our Great Cities Commitment."  While the layout of this campus may seem intimidating to a new student, it is part of our history.  While the school may have challenges finding the money to renovate the campus, it is a challenge we must learn to overcome.
     It is also interesting to draw attention to the vast amount of diversity on the campus.  UIC's fifteen different colleges attract people of all interests and backgrounds.  While exploring the residence halls, I was greeted with many examples of cultural diversity.  Leslie Padilla's blog post entitled "English 160 Writing Project 1" describes her experience as she walks down Halsted Street.  She explains her encounters with two different students that both have different reasons for being in the same place, one for athletic and one for social reasons.  This University caters to student's academic and
social needs. These examples support a section of UIC's mission statement that declares UIC's mission is "To provide a wide range of students with the educational opportunity only a leading research university can offer."
     The University of Illinois in Chicago is a well rounded school. It offers many opportunities for its students to grow and learn in an enriching environment.  The struggles first year students face while trying to navigate around the buildings seem to subside quickly.  Having been a student at UIC for five weeks now I can say that I truly feel advantaged to have such a historically rich neighborhood surrounding me and to be able to learn from all the different cultures clustered here.