If you thought the recent crackdown on parties in East Campus was bad, imagine living on campus 40 years ago.
“We put up a big poster of Spider-Man in my window,” recalled Leo Wong, CC ’68. “Now that I think of it, it was probably a big eyesore. It seemed kind of clever to us, but I’m surprised no one called us on it.”
Wong might have been the exception: most alumni recalled a University intent on keeping a strict Ivy League image in its residence halls. But behind the marbled façade, dorm life at Columbia was experiencing a revolution, and, in a telling lead-up to the events of spring 1968, the University was unable to keep up.
For the 1967-1968 school year, a single in John Jay cost between $460 and $530 per academic year—a double, $310 to $490. Dorms available for undergraduates were John Jay (part of which was graduate housing), Furnald, Hartley, Livingston (renamed Wallach in the ’80s), and Carman. With the exception of the latter, built in 1959, all the dorms were of turn-of-the-century vintage, and sported corridor—style layouts (Hartley and Livingston/Wallach would later be remodeled into their current configuration).
The housing bulletin for the 1967-1968 academic year reveals extensive policies regarding the maintenance of a clean-cut image to dorm life. Food was prohibited in rooms, with refrigerators allowed only in “the case of medical necessity.” Residents were required to keep a certain standard of “neatness” upon threat of discipline, and “intoxicating liquors and gambling” were expressly prohibited.
But the austere lifestyle was slowly opening up. Women had been prohibited from entering men’s dorms at Columbia, but in the early ’60s, visitation policies were enacted.
“When I first got into the dorm, women were allowed to visit on Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. only, as long as you had a book in the door” so that
resident advisers could break up any inappropriate behavior, recalled Ross Ain, CC ’68.
“The joke was that guys would put a match book in the door and lock it. And by the next year, they got rid of that—women were generally allowed in the dorms. We were really in the middle of a transition.”
The main strain on dorm life in the 1960s was the lack of social aspects, an issue compounded by Columbia’s expansion of its facilities. The end of World War II saw the growth of American colleges with respect to both larger and more specialized departments, and larger student bodies. Students clamored for more of a “college experience” rather than the ascetic existence of academia.
The University thus embarked on a rash of building in the late ’50s and early ’60s that was marred by a variety of problems. Angered at what they saw as bad architectural design, crowds picketed the groundbreaking of Uris. Bad concrete delayed the construction of Revson Plaza and the new School of Law building.
The University’s efforts to expand its dorms and foster campus community also faced obstacles. In his book on Columbia’s architectural history, art history professor Barry Bergdoll explains that the Federal Housing and Home Agency stipulated as a condition of its building loan to Columbia that there be no link between Carman and the Ferris Booth student center (since replaced by Lerner Hall), to combat what they saw as a “country club atmosphere” on college campuses.
“I’ve never been in prison, but I assume that it wouldn’t be much different,” said Arthur Lyman, CC ’68, about his years in Carman. “There was nothing done in design terms to encourage people to come out of their rooms. Nor was there any place on campus where students were really encouraged to gather.”
Besides complaints of poor design and a lack of emphasis on student life, Columbia also struggled with the upkeep of its dorms. Acquisition of new housing for graduate students, namely the Arizona and Yorkshire Hotels in 1964 (renamed Ruggles and McBain, respectively), meant an added burden of renovation and maintenance.
Yet despite the poor residential life, alumni seemed to not have minded Columbia’s shortcomings. “I guess Columbia was never big on school spirit,” said Wong. “We liked going there, but for me, college spirit wasn’t a big deal.”