Examining the Good, the Bad and the Ugly Dorm Rooms

Author: Lindsey Whitton

Interior decorating is an art that is practiced in every culture and most every economic stratum. Throughout time, people have taken pride in designing and decorating the place where they live. People overcome limitations such as size, necessary furniture and budget and have created original, inventive and artistic interiors.

College campus culture produces an interesting variant to this age-old art. The space students are given to work with is often dismal, stained and damaged by past occupants and the decorations are limited by the dorm lifestyle and meager budgets. It is therefore rare to find interesting antiques, important fabrics or fragile accoutrements in a dorm room.

Creative students, however, can overcome the limitations of dorm decorating and roommate style conflicts, and can transform their "jail cell" spaces into attractive, functional mini-homes. A dorm room in the right hands can become a peaceful oasis, an eccentric statement or a backdrop for some great parties.

Of course such idyllic dorm rooms are few and far between, like pearls among the swine. Most students encounter less success with their initial attempts at interior decorating. Lack of motivation or time, or pure sloth can contribute to the absolutely disgusting dorm rooms that many college students contentedly inhabit. These are the rooms we all know and love where the garbage can is never emptied and the contents soon spill out across the floor, where there are more clothes underfoot then in the drawers, where the shade is usually down and the one or two generic posters are about to peel away from the cinderblock wall.

The Campus decided to search for some of Middlebury College's most inspired and most condemned dorm rooms. We waded through miles of empty pizza boxes, broken beer bottles and lots of dirty laundry to bring you the good, the bad and the unmentionable. We considered creativity, comfort, functionality and aesthetic appeal — or lack there of — and gave extra points to those hardy souls who actually put their clean laundry away before using it again.

May these snapshots offer inspiration and insight as students ponder their decorating scheme for next year, and remember something your mother never told you: a really messy room can hide a multitude of sins.