University of Iowa - Hawkeye Yearbook (Iowa City, IA)

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You have to study sometime The house was built around 1880 into the side of a hill. Scrollwork graced the bay windows on the side and the front porch. Inside, a narrow, twisting stair- case led to the second floor and another set of stairs up to the attic, from where one could look out on Capitol Street through a small, round window under the eaves. It was a fine, comfortable home then, with the back of the house overlooking the river. The house is still there on the corner of Capitol and Bloomington, not yet sacrificed for a parking lot or a new building. The sounds a house makes are still there, too. The stairs creak, the radiator pipes clang, the front door bangs, But while the family that lived in the house found the sounds comforting and friendly, they are not so appreciated now. Any noise is an interruption, for the white clapboard house with the peeling front porch has since become a study haven for Honors students at the University. It's hard to say what attracts students to study at the Honors House. They could find the same fluores- cent lights in the library. Couches and arm chairs are just as available in dorm lounges - probably more available there, since couches in the Honors House are prime seating for those with reading to 200 Honors House

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The new music . . . space for simultaneous rehearsals by an orchestra, a band, a chorus, eight organists, half a dozen cham- ber music groups and more than 70 soloists . . . a 75- square-foot library on the second floor . . . a micro- film room, a room for rare books, and a listening and ear training laboratory adjoining the library . . . an electronics laboratory for music composition . . . new recording equipment. . . Q 'K Q' l at ' 'bint-'. i t igmztwrt' L if complex Music Complex 199

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do and are taken first. There's a fine collection of books - the Truax Library - but books are rarely checked out. The rooms are painted dull, sleepy colors. In the winter, students often put up with chilly or overheated rooms and always with the clanging pipes. It's a dumpty sort of cozin-ess at the Honors House. Half-filled ash trays and empty Iowa dixie cups sit on the end tables and the few examples of student art seem out of place under the fluorescent lighting. But as one student noted, It's ugly in a way, but it's a house. There's an attic to explore, and in the spring there are plenty of windows to run around and shut when it rains. The sterility of dorms and the distrac- tions of apartments are gone. In their place - the warmth of a house filled with people. The people may not be the most talkative. They come there to study, assured of silence and few inter- ruptions. A senior in Home Economics last year studied proxemics in the Honors House, or how the students utilized the space there. She concluded that students seek isolation and achieve it by such means as studying in separate rooms, sitting in the middle of a couch, barricading oneself with personal belongings or remaining in one spot a long time. Yet there's a comraderie among these students who come to stake out their personal domains for book- ing. This comraderie is not so much provided by the Honors program itself. Greater utilization of the house for discussion groups, poetry readings and other programs has been encouraged this year. One of the students urging these programs hoped they would give some unifying sense to the Honors House. Response and participation, however, have been meager. This unspoken, unobtrusive comraderie apparently does not depend on planned activities. The common task of studying seems to be unifying spirit enough. I go to the Honors House to study, to see a few friends, and because I won't feel like a martyr for staying up late studying, commented one girl. Isolation is hard to come by on nights be- fore big pre-med examsg the house is full. But a pack- ed house on those nights also exudes an empathy for the student who would rather be sleeping or partying than cramming for a test. There are those who break at ten and go out for a beer. Others are in no cliques. They come alone, gradually meet a few people and eventually know enough faces there to feel they belong. Others come back because they've discovered that the nameless cat who had been sacking in upstairs on the couch all autumn finally had her kittens down in the library. But they all come there to study, because when you're in college you have to study sometime. So it might as well be in a place where you can get some- thing done. And if the place has a fireplace inside and looks like something from Music Man from the outside - well, so much the better. 9 article by Ginalie Bein Honors House 201