Mad About Midd A shag room goodbye

Author: Dave Barker

The shag carpet room in Starr Library is dying. Wrecking balls come in February to clear space for the new Donald Everett Axinn '51 Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Starr Library. So on Monday, with College Project Manager Tom McGinn as my guide, I made my way up to the study loft, past the debris of bookends, mouse traps and broken glass, to say goodbye to an old friend.

I realize that only about half of campus remembers the "shag room" as it was known to students, but its memory needs to be preserved before construction begins. Architectural blueprints have the shag room marked as a mechanical space.

For what the shag room lacked in interior decorating, with its vomit orange and cream-colored shag carpet and early 1970s Native American art, it made up for in atmosphere. You could hide a six-pack of beer in the shag of that carpet. The carpet and the brick walls made the room as quiet as a mausoleum.

In comparison to the modern heating systems on campus, a sign next to the light switch seemed ancient: "There is no direct heat supplied to the loft study. Exhaust blower pulls warmer air from below." Indeed, during December nights in the shag room, I didn't take off my coat. Although in the low-ceilinged nook on the upper level of the loft, I'm not sure if much of anything stayed on when couples retreated there to turn shag into a verb.

In the nook, time has stood still. A lone thesis carrel bares the name of a "Constance Hanson, Spring Term 2004." Etched into the carrel, a frustrated student wrote: "I will not sit here and waste away." Sadly, the shag room, with dust heavy on the banisters and most of its furniture gone, doesn't have the determination of the student.

I liked the shag room because of its history. McGinn thinks the room used to be an attic in the original 1900 building before its conversion to a study loft in the 1960s. John M. McCardell Bicentennial Hall and the new library might have Internet jacks on toilet paper dispensers, but in the shag room, you had to look hard for an electrical outlet. As for the art, which depicts such subjects as a woodpecker and a deer hunting scene, it belongs on the mostly blank walls of the new library to remind students about the hideous tastes of the 1970s.

The Axinn Center will offer a mix of the old and new. Exploratory demolition going on now has unearthed a maple wood floor in good condition and the original marble exterior of Starr Library, both of which will be incorporated into the renovation. I wonder then, couldn't the shag room be left as a study loft? I have yet to find a study area that blocked out the distractions or felt as cozy as the shag room. I'll miss you, friend.