What’s it like for a guy to live in an all-girls dorm? Marcos Garcia, CC ’08, spent a year in Barnard’s Plimpton Hall and lived to share the story.
Q: How many girls did you live with? What was the setup of the suite?
A: I lived with four girls at a time, but six in total. Five singles with a kitchen and hallway common area.
Q: What’s the best thing about living in an all-girls (or at least all-girls for the most part) dorm?
A: The best part: being able to live with my friends. I have always had more female friends than male friends throughout life, which translated into more Barnard friends than Columbia friends because a high school classmate of mine attends Barnard and I met all of my current friends through her.
Q: And the worst thing?
A: Honestly, other than normal intrasuite discord, there was nothing really wrong with my living situation. I loved it! I was given all of the privileges that the Barnard students are given without any hesitation and that made me feel really great about living there. This was even able to mask the semifar walk every day, even though my classes were in Schermerhorn and Pupin, which is not that far at all.
Q: How did you end up living in Barnard housing? What’s it like?
A: I ended up living in Barnard because my friends wanted me to live in a suite with them because they had an extra room to fill. We had always discussed living together as a hypothetical. One day, the topic came up, and although very hesitant at first—the only woman I lived with was my mother at the time—I accepted the invite.
I loved living at Barnard. The room was big, the view was amazing (uptown), I knew the staff by name and would stop to converse all the time as if we’d known each other for years, and most importantly, my friends were with me. Also, Plimpton has a computer lab, vending machines, etc., so that I would never have to leave the dorm to get something I needed.
It’s also nice to live in Plimpton because, although it is far, it’s a great way to get away from campus. Every time you go home, you feel like you’re getting away from Columbia, and sometimes, that helps to deal with the stress because you don’t have Butler or Hamilton right out your window.
Q: Funniest or strangest thing you’ve ever encountered or seen in your suite?
A: Skin-tone bras provide for much of a double take and a covering of the eyes. Luckily, it was skin-tone bras and not anything else. Never really an issue though, but I still did get freaked out.
Q: What do people say when you tell them you live in Barnard housing? Any interesting reactions?
A: Most people had the double take. A sort of, “Excuse me?” attitude, as if I had made a mistake. But once I had explained that men were allowed to live in Barnard housing and subsequently the relationship of Barnard to Columbia, it was fine. Barnard students usually thought it was really cool and never knew that it was allowed, and at Columbia, it was the
normal interrogation-to-ambivalence attitude, where it didn’t really matter.
Q: I’m guessing you must have lived in a Columbia dorm your first year. How do Barnard dorms compare to Columbia dorms?
A: I think the fact that you’re living with friends really provides bias to the question—however, I loved it. In Plimpton, there’s a supervisor who’s amazing, so there’s never any waiting around for facilities to fix your heater, etc. The rooms were also really big, and the view I had out of my window wasn’t a shaft, but uptown New York City, which is a great refresher, and the general attitude of the students is much greater. Barnard dorms aren’t run like a business, they really try to foster a community vibe—they’re really into cohesion and getting to know you for you. It was really refreshing to come home from a hard day of exams and have the desk attendant ask you if you’re feeling OK, then having a conversation with someone in the elevator because it’s not weird to talk to other students, and then walk into your fairly-sized room and relax.
It’s also nice not to have all of the fire alarms at 6:30 a.m. I don’t remember any intentional fire alarms by the students, as opposed to the many of Schapiro and Furnald.