As an English major, I spend a disproportionate amount of my time in Tucker Hall. Generally, it’s one of the better-looking buildings on campus — even though the building looks like it was constructed as two separate halves that had to be stitched together by a structure that resembles an amphitheater because the builders couldn’t agree on where the second floor should be located.
The main lobby is beautiful, with grand marble steps perfect for photos. The amphitheater, bizarre as it is, makes a great place to work on homework and readings between classes.
The chairs in all the classrooms are comfortable and the tables give you plenty of space to spread out all of your novels, Norton Anthologies, printed out Blackboard readings and notebooks. The furniture is also relatively easy to maneuver — at least easier than the chair-desks you might find in Morton. The wheels on everything makes it possible to rearrange a classroom for discussions or seminars and then put it back for lectures.
The third-floor classrooms are cozy nooks full of natural light brought in by the charming round windows that look out over campus. In fact, most of the classrooms in the building seem to be streaming with natural light. Even the basement is decently well lit, considering it’s a basement and is mostly underground.
I recognize that it’s a good thing that my biggest complaint about the building I have most of my classes in is the lighting in one specific classroom, but I can’t help being just a little bit petty when the window are so darn small.
The one exception to Tucker’s sunshine-filled classrooms is room 222. This classroom is located in the back of the lower second floor, and you either have to know how to navigate the side staircases or go up the main stairs and down the amphitheater to get there.
I’ve had quite a high number of classes in room 222, and every semester I am frustrated by the ridiculous lack of natural light in the room. The classroom is one of the larger ones in Tucker and the tables can be maneuvered into a variety of configurations and would be a great place to have class if the windows were of a reasonable size.
The back wall of the classroom has three windows that are somehow only about a third the size of most of the windows in Tucker classrooms. This wouldn’t bother me if it was a basement classroom that only had slot-like windows at the top of the wall. It wouldn’t even bother me if the building was constructed more like Morton, with small slits of windows like the ones in my high school.
However, it does bother me. And it bothers me not just because every other classroom in Tucker is exceedingly well lit, but also because there are several feet of wall above the windows. I’m sure there is some sort of structural reason that this wall space cannot be taken up by the windows, but to the average student, it seems like there is a clear solution to the problem of room 222’s lighting, and that solution is creating larger windows.
I recognize that it’s a good thing that my biggest complaint about the building I have most of my classes in is the lighting in one specific classroom, but I can’t help being just a little bit petty when the windows are so darn small.