“Wait, you live there?”
“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing man, except if totally sucks.”
“Well, I like it. I mean, it is my home.”
This is the jest of what happens whenever the whereabouts of my current residence pops up in a conversation. Bean East is one of several dorms on campus, but it gets a bad rap.
There are many stereotypes and connotations about living in this place, and I hope to dispel, or at least explain, some of them for the general audience. Some dorms on campus come with a stereotype. Barnhart is full of student athletes, while Global Scholars has all the smart rich kids.
Bean, or as some people call, “The Dirty Bean,” is perceived as run down, old and one of the worst places to live on campus. After living here for the entirety of my freshman year, I learned that while the rumors aren’t entirely true, there is a bit of truth to them.
Bean East is the conjoined twin of Bean West located on the eastern side of campus. Both are well known for being (or at least looking like) some of the oldest dorms on campus. And it doesn’t help that the brand new giant-mega dorm known as Global Scholars (GSH) is across the street, mocking us with their awesomeness.
GSH has more people, its own dining area with a café, a library with its own printer, countless study rooms, a giant room where they put on events and even have classes there and an elevator.
Once, I got the chance to go up into one of their student lounges that people use to study and it’s amazing. I’m not sure if someone left their X-Box there or if all of them come with one, but I am certainly jealous. Plus, they have a TV! My hall in Bean (Parsons) didn’t get a TV in our lounge until winter term. And when were finally were going to get one, they gave it to another hall last minute and we had to another hall and we had to wait another two weeks to get one.
It was like your parents got you a car for your birthday but then gave it to your neighbor instead.
Bean gets a bad rap for looking like a prison, and the similarities are uncanny. In both Beans, there is a central court yard, two outside metal gates, and several concrete walls, a creepy basement that connects the two, and the entire rectangular blocky shape of the buildings looks ominously like it’s trying to keep you trapped inside.
For a while there was a rumor going around that the guy who designed Bean also made prisons.
In addition to that notoriety, my hall of Parsons is a wellness hall and I have no idea what that means. In fact, no one knows what that means. People seem to think that we all exercise together or something. I actually heard a girl say that once.
And a part of me wishes that was true, that we all had some in common like fitness, but we’re just a bunch of regular college students. Everything you’d expect a college student to be doing has already been done here. So there’s nothing “well” about this place.
Even though I missed having a TV, the fact that we didn’t have one meant that everyone socialized and talked to each other instead. And not having food or a mail box wasn’t that bad.
For me, it gave me a chance to get out of my room and take a stroll around campus. Bean doesn’t have food and isn’t in the center of campus, so few people pass by here and it is relatively quiet (aside from the occasional drunken chanting on weekend nights).
Bean East may not be perfect, but for a time, it was my home. While the small dorm room I shared for eight months with a total stranger never truly felt like home, I treated it as such.
I respected it along with whoever shared it with me.  Dorm life was an interesting experience and while it wasn’t perfect, it was memorable. At the very least, it motivated me to study and to go get a decent apartment.