Spring 2020 Quarantine Reporter's Notebook Pt. 3
Third installment of my reporter’s notebook for COMM 276. In this edition, I show an inside look of what remains in an abandoned all-freshman dorm that I was an RA in.
taken on iPhone 7
Arroyo is an all-freshman dorm at Stanford.
A sign on the entrance to the door lays down the ground rules for conduct inside the “facility”.
When you walk in, a small card made in September greets and reminds visitors of the dorm’s values.
A map shows the geographic diversity of the dorm’s residents.
A sign on the kitchenette door reinforces the current policy of how to operate in the space.
Leftover dishes in the kitchenette sink.
A whiteboard on the first floor shows an old poll regarding the most ideal pizza topping. Residents were forced to leave before finishing the bracket and revealing a winner.
The whiteboard on the second floor hallway has various messages scrawled on it.
A leftover birthday sign on the door of a room on the second floor. A tradition in all-freshman dorms is “birthday showers”: waking someone up on the night of their birthday and showering them in the communal bathroom. In Arroyo, residents collaborated together to create large birthday cards to put on the door.
Some residents like to customize the small canvas board posted outside their rooms. On this board, two residents publicize “open office hours” and invite dormmates to hang out in their room.
Some residents have whiteboards posted on the doors to their rooms. On this whiteboard, a resident writes down a hopeful note for spring quarter before heading home. Little did she know that COVID-19 would evolve and that Stanford students would not be allowed back on campus for an indefinite time period.
A post-it note from the first day of school has stayed on the door of a resident for the entire school year. It is tradition for the RAs of all-frosh dorms to write notes to their residents on the last day of New Student Orientation (NSO) to excite students for the upcoming year.
On a resident’s last day in Arroyo, he or she wrote a heartfelt note to an RA on her whiteboard — not knowing that it would be the last day in the dorm for a very long time.
A hallway, usually filled with the dorm’s residents, is now empty for most of the day during this year’s spring quarter.
A single flyer regarding loneliness is left posted on the announcement board in the foyer.
A graphic design drawing of the RAs of Arroyo.