Chestertown Hall

Information you might find helpful ...

Most Scholars STS freshmen live in "the STS dormitory," Chestertown Hall. Our program office (where the director & assistant director work and other instructors hold office hours) opens onto the study lounge on the ground floor of Chestertown. Many of the sophomores choose to return to Chestertown, which means that most of the students living here are in STS. We hope all new students will choose to live in Chestertown!

Women and Men

Because fewer women than men are in STS, about 2-1/2 floors are men and 1 floor is women. Women live in the "pockets" of rooms on the 1st floor and on half of the 3rd floor. Men occupy the 2nd and 4th floors and share the 3rd floor. Each area develops its own style and culture; if you live in Chestertown you can visit any hallway. Because there are only 140 residents of Chestertown, you'll get to know everyone by sight and many people by name.

Room and Window Size (rugs & carpets)

The rooms themselves are doubles, so 160 square feet; this is about 12 feet by 15 feet or a little more elongated. If you bring a carpet remnant, you might bring a carpet knife to trim it to fit. There are one big closet and one big window, 2 desks chairs, mattresses, bureaus and beds. Windows come with adjustable slatted blinds. However, if you want to really block the light you'll want curtains, using a curtain rod that has spring in it (walls are masonry that will not accept screws). The windows are recessed by about 4 inches, which means that the rod will stay in place, under compression from its internal spring. These window recesses are 52" wide; ground floor windows are 76" tall and upper floor windows are 63" tall. You might consider getting 2 short curtains, each on their own springy rod, so that you can close the lower one for privacy while keeping the upper one open for light. Consider getting a folding stool so you can stick that closet rod back up where it belongs after you yank it down by mistake; the ceilings are very tall.

Fans

Chestertown Hall has no air conditioning. However, you can bring fans, including box fans that stand on the windowsill inside the screen. Standing fans will circulate the (stuffy) air in your room. A flat fan in the window will bring in new air or exhaust the old air. There are lots of opinions about the best way to ventilate a room. My personal opinion is that a Holmes-type window fan with an "out" fan and an "in" fan, and solid wings that block air flow around the fan, is the best, especially when combined with a standing fan that pans a breeze back and forth across the room.

Roommates

some of you will put a friend down on your housing form. Most will have an unknown roommate. Either way, you'll want to take seriously your roommate contract, a document that Resident Life requires you to complete early in your residence. The vast majority of you haven't shared a bedroom with someone else for months on end. Two good people with reasonable habits still will disagree about lots of things, and the contract at least gets you on the same page. I've been married 15 years: I know!

Community

Chestertown is a friendly residence hall. As one of the 2 smallest residence halls in the Scholars Living-Learning community, only 140 students live in it. You will become familiar with most of them, and see individuals on the other side of this enormous campus and in your large math, chemistry and physics classes. Resident Life staff support students in living in community with their peers who probably are quite different from themselves. Living in Chestertown enables you to participate fully in social events, in pick-up study groups, and to roll out of bed to get to English 101S or your Scholars STS courses. We urge you to live in Chestertown! The floorplan of the 1st floor shows you the large study and leisure lounges and the location of the STS administrative offices.

Please contact your roommate before investing in major purchases for your room - curtains, rugs, refrigerators, TVs. All these things take space, cost a lot of money, and make an aesthetic impression on the room. Talk it through with your roommate and share the responsibility for them.

View the room layouts and more information about Chestertown Hall.

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