More is better. You’ve known that for a long time, right? That’s how you got in here. You visited Yale and you visited Harvard, you compared the number of parties you attended, you realized that more is better (any positive integer being more than zero Harvard parties), and you decided to come here. Well now it’s time to apply that same logic to the residential colleges. Copy our adage onto a flashcard, or just write it on the top margin of this page. More is Better. Berkeley is Better.
Let’s take the basics first. Every other college has one building. We have two. More is better. South Court, the larger of the two buildings, houses the dining hall, the famed Bagel Bar, the multipurpose room (basketball court/dance studio/performance space), the sumptuously-appointed library and computer lab, and enough student rooms to house most of Berkeley’s rollicking senior and junior classes. North Court, adjacent to the behemoth Master’s House, is slightly smaller and quieter, providing mouth-watering student accommodations usually snapped up in large part by our promising sophomores. North Court also features the game room (ping-pong, pool, and FREE ARCADE VERSION OF NBA JAM), the music room and practice room, the darkroom, the printing press, and the woodshop, in which master carpenters offer their services to students free of charge. Berkeley students have been arguing over which court is better since the college’s completion in 1934, a debate that culminates every winter with the North Court versus South Court snowball fight. (N.B.: This is actually a secret scheme to stuff snow down the shirts of unsuspecting Trumbull students.)
Of course, not all of the school year can be spent within the luxurious confines of the college (the first of the 12 to undergo renovation, and universally considered to have turned out better than either Branford or Saybrook). When the need arises, we Berkeleyites find that living in the most centrally-located college again offers us more that is better: Berkeley has one foot on Elm Street, the main artery of campus life, and one foot on Wall Street, gateway to Commons and Woolsey Hall. While other colleges can all claim to be close to something, we are close to everything. Old Campus and LC, Broadway shopping, York Street snacking, breakfast at Commons, class in WLH — we are perfectly located in the middle of all of them. Other colleges may try to boost their spirits by sneering at our split buildings, but just look at what’s in our yard: Cross Campus, Sterling Memorial Library, and CCL. Berkeleyites of 2006, prepare to thumb your noses. Everyone else, prepare to drool.
Reid Cherlin is a senior in Berkeley College.