Service & Maintenance Staff
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Main Libraries
- The Esther Raushenbush Library
- Visual Resources Library
- William Schuman Music Library
Popular Places to Chill
- Black Squirrel
- North Lawn
- The Pub
Coffeehouse on Campus
Teahaus
Movie Theater on Campus
- Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Film Theatre (Heimbold Visual Arts Center)
- Performing Arts Center (PAC) Film Viewing Room
"Green" Initiatives
Warren Green House, an eco-friendly cooperative living initiative, makes residents commit to a sustainable lifestyle (e.g., only buying locally-grown produce).
School Slang
- Blue Room: Space for student-run parties and dances, located underneath Bates Dining Hall
- B-Ville: Bronxville
- Conference Week: High-stress period at the end of each semester when students rush to finish conference projects
- Conference Work, Projects, or Papers: Assignments that occur outside of class between you and your professor, usually about a subject that interests you
- DL: Dudley Lawrence, a dorm
- FVR: Film Viewing Room in the basement of Reisinger; sometimes confused with Film Viewing Room in Heimbold
- Gill: Gilbert, a dorm
- The Hill, Bates Hill: Steep concrete incline leading to Bates where everybody falls on their butt at least once during the winter
- The Hutch: The Hutchinson River Parkway connects outsiders to SLC.
- Kober: Two-story parking structure located beside Hill House
- Mobil: The gas station near Hill House where students buy beer and cigarettes
- New Dorms: Buildings opposite the Old Dorms with red-brick 1970s architecture; includes Taylor, Garrison, and Rothschild
- Old Dorms: Buildings opposite the New Dorms with Tudor-style design; includes Gilbert, Titsworth, Dudley Lawrence, and MacCracken
- PAC: Performing Arts Center, where all major theater and dance performances occur
- The Pub, the Pube, the Siegel Center: Student hot spot for junk food, fast food, and socializing
- The Purple Door: A purple-colored door in Andrews House; location of Operations and Facilities, where you get keys, toilet paper, and repair requests
- Reisinger: Performance space, located across from The Pub
- Sleaze Week: This refers to a spring semester event that encourages open discussions about sexuality and sexual identity, and culminates with popular on-campus dance, the Sleazeball.
- Teahaus: Small stone cottage on the North Lawn where students drink tea, socialize, and play musical instruments
- Westlands: Where all major administrative offices are located, as well as the quiet dorms and an all-night security station (Westlands Desk)
- The Wheel: The Spinning Wheel, a tavern in Bronxville that caters to SLC students
Traditions
- Bacchanalia: After class officially ends in the spring, Bacchanalia begins! Students flock to the North Lawn for a day of dancing, live music, games, free food, and free beer (if you're over 21). This is a time when students of all ages truly unite on campus and celebrate together. Look out for lots of weepy seniors who aren't happy about graduating.
- Bates Brunch : No matter how hungover students are, they stumble down Bates Hill on Saturday and Sunday mornings for an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Make your own waffles and custom order your omelets. By 12:30 p.m., the dining hall is packed; arrive by 11:30 a.m. to get a booth.
- Cabaret: This is the highly-popular proving ground for singers, dancers, actors, and comedians on campus; consider it the SLC equivalent of a championship sports game. Anything goes on stage, so long as your performance is good, funny, sexy, or comically bad. Over the course of a year, students often return to the stage in attempts to top their previous acts with new ones that are increasingly outlandish and extravagant.
- Casino Night: For one night only, the gym in Campbell Sports Center turns into a brisk, high-stakes casino, with a variety of games, live jazz, catered hors d'oeuvres, and big prizes to reel students in from the outside world.
- Coffee and Donuts: Distributed by SLAC in the basement atrium of the library, free coffee and donuts keep students chugging through the late nights of Conference Week.
- Formals: Once in the fall and once in the spring, hundreds upon hundreds of SLC students flock in evening attire to a large tent erected on the South Lawn to dance their feet off. By far the biggest social event of each semester, the headlining DJ or band is the topic of heated discussion on campus for weeks before the event.
- Homecoming: A week of evening festivities leads up to the biggest basketball game of the year, followed by a Blue Room dance to celebrate the Gryphons, win or lose.
- Midnight Breakfast: During Conference Week at the end of each semester, the College opens Bates at midnight for an early-morning celebration of music, food, and prizes. Students who are pulling all-nighters come to get recharged with pancakes and cookies, while students who have finished their work come to celebrate the end of the semester.
- Relaxation Stations: SLAC's conference week havens designed to soothe the frayed nerves of students burned out from too many all-nighters. Free massages, cocoa, and arts-n-crafts are staples.
- Rocky Horror Picture Show Shadow Cast Production: Whether you're a die-hard Rocky fan or a so-called Rocky "virgin," this annual fall semester event is worth checking out, if only to see your classmates decked out in ridiculous leather outfits. The notorious 1975 film is projected onto the wall in Reisinger while a well-practiced cast of students lip sync, act, and dance on stage. Preceding the film is a pre-show during which the cast puts on a series of hilarious skits and songs.
- Winterfest: SLC kids mosey from club tables at the campus organization fair through exotic refreshments run by student volunteers to the gym, crowded with novelties, inflatable amusements, and a mechanical bull, all to pulsating beats from a massive sound system.
Urban Legends
- On the top floor of Westlands, the ghost of a dead student haunts the south wing.
- Students who can't afford campus housing secretly live in the murky Bates basement.
- The architect who designed the New Dorms committed suicide after seeing how ugly the buildings actually looked.
- The black squirrels seen everywhere on campus are in a racial war against the gray squirrels.
- The College won't expel troublesome students until after the tuition refund date has passed.
- When Yoko Ono was an undergrad at SLC, she painted a mural on her wall that is still there today.
Favorite Things To Do
Every day, the College Events office emails you a list of the day's goings-on around campus. Keep on top of that, and you'll stay occupied. Students can see a performance at the PAC, catch a quality flick courtesy of Sarah Lawrence Activities Council, cheer the Gryphons at the Campbell Sports Center, or shoot pool in a student tournament at the Black Squirrel.
The theater department puts on performances every weekend, most of which are booked up in advance (sign up for seats in the PAC lobby as soon as the posters go up around campus). Sarah Lawrence Activities Council (SLAC) loads weekends with movie screenings, live music, dances, and open mics. Every Friday night, there's Midnight Cabaret in Titsworth.
Clubs and Organizations on Campus
Club life is small but nonetheless active at SLC! Many students get involved with one or more extracurriculars. Popular choices include political/activist groups (SLC Dems, Amnesty International), identity groups (Queer People of Color, Asian Pacific Islander Coalition), religious groups (Hillel), theater/improv groups (Melancholy Players), and literary publications (Dark Phrases, SLC Review).
Student Activities Offered
- Campus ministries
- Choral groups
- Dance
- Drama/theater
- International student organization
- Jazz band
- Literary magazine
- Model UN
- Music ensembles
- Musical theater
- Radio station
- Student government
- Student-run film society
- Symphony orchestra
- Yearbook
ROTC
Air Force ROTC:
NoNavy ROTC:
NoArmy ROTC:
NoDid You Know?
- Student Senate funds and oversees student clubs. To get your own club started, talk to a senator or the directors of Student Activities!
- Tourists have been known to visit SLC just to peek inside the beautiful, neo-Tudor, Westlands building, located on the North Lawn.