Block Party A celebration on the last day of finals week, spring semester. Everyone is done with exams, papers, projects, and presentations for the year and can let loose and have fun! The entire Grinnell community — students, professors, and townsfolk — get together to celebrate the end of the year. A whole block is shut down and the community is treated to a barbeque, live music from student bands, and refreshments. The entire day is spent socializing, reminiscing, and bidding farewell to Grinnell until next year.
Harris The Harris Center, a building on the tip of North Campus that houses a cinema, game room, club offices, and a huge space for performances, dances, and themed dance parties such as disco, ’80s, and Mary B. James, the all-campus cross-dressing dance party. Great music, refreshments, and platforms to dance on are provided for your Harris pleasure!
Jungle Gym Playfully-designed, two-story study carrels at Burling Library. Grinnellians work hard — Princeton Review ranks Grinnell one of the top 10 schools where students study most. But studying can be fun! The first floor of Burling has “jungle gyms,” where you shimmy up a ladder to get to the study spaces. It really brings you back to childhood ... with a little added physical chemistry or Chaucer.
Loggia Gorgeous arched walkways that are a unifying architectural feature of Grinnell’s campus. You can either be IN the loggia or ON the loggia. On a cold Iowa winter day, you want to stay IN the loggia to protect yourself from snow, wind, and ice. On a hot summer day, there is no better place than ON the loggia to hang out or have a dance party. Just crawl out a second floor window onto the loggia roof, and voilà!
Mac Field An athletic and recreational field between North and East Campus and next to the dining hall. It’s a central part of Grinnell life. When it’s warm enough you’ll likely see the Ultimate Frisbee team sprinting up and down and students sunbathing, studying, catching some Zzzs, playing an impromptu game of softball, or maybe even blowing bubbles and admiring the sky. Mac Field is also home to intramural football, the quidditch team, and Dag, a club whose members battle each other with foam weapons.
Pit Dorm basements with livable rooms. Grinnellians lovingly call these basements “pits,” so if somebody says, “I’m going to the pit,” it simply means that they’re going to the basement. Pits are frequently home to laundry facilities and computer labs as well as dorm rooms and even some student organizations, such as the textbook lending library and the Stonewall Resource Center, which houses the LGBTQA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, Allies) resource library.
Puppies and Pancakes A finals-week feast. During finals week, you’ll probably spend most of your days studying. To get you out of this rut, the Grinnell fire department sets up shop in the Harris Center and makes pancakes for the entire student body. As you wait for your pancakes, you can play with puppies that members of the Grinnell community bring to the Harris Center to help relieve finals week stress. While eating your deliciously light and fluffy pancakes, you can play with Play-doh or indulge in a game from your childhood, such as Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, or Hungry Hungry Hippo.
Self-Gov Short for self-governance, self-gov stems from the understanding that students will act respectfully toward one another without the administration setting down many explicitly stated rules. This ultimately distills to treating others as you would like to be treated and allows members of the Grinnell community to not just coexist, but to learn and thrive together. The fabric of our Grinnell being, self-gov is love.
Squid A dining hall diversion. Imagine that you are sitting in the dining hall when your meal is interrupted by a banana peel plopping down on your table. Don’t be alarmed – this is just the game “squid.” People take their banana peels, yell “SQUID!” and fling them haphazardly toward no place in particular. Once the squid lands, it is your job to kill it. Simply grab the nearest fork, stab the banana peel a few times, and hold the conquered squid up in triumph. You’ll get a huge round of applause for your heroic efforts.
Melanie Jucewicz '12 is a French Major from Chicago, IL.
