Students remain on campus for sports, work

As many students left for Winter Break by plane, train and automobile, waving good-bye to Vassar's campus, others shuffled their belongings across campus and moved into Noyes House for the interim. Others huddled down in their Town House, Terrace Apartment or SoCo, enveloped in Snuggies and sipping hot chocolate.

84 students stayed in Noyes House this past winter and many others stayed in the Terrace Apartments and Town Houses, with a total of 300 students spending some portion of their break on campus. The majority of those students are athletes and student workers, as well as international students.

This winter 55 students stayed on campus as part of student employment. Administrative Assistant for the Financial Aid Office Linda Ferraro said, "They are employed in the departments that stay open: the Library, post office, Campus Activities, Career and Development [Office], the nursery school [Wimpfheimer], Residential Life."

However, students do not just stay on campus because they have no other place to go for the holidays.

Said Director of Residential and Assistant Dean of Students Luis Inoa, "They're staying here because they're working and they're staying here because they have athletics."

Students move into Noyes shortly after the end of the semester, and they use the rooms of Noyes residents who have gone home for break. The College charges a flat fee of $100 to stay on campus, $25 of which is given back to the rooms' normal residents as a token of appreciation.

Although they were centralized, there was little cohesion among the students who migrated to Noyes.

"It was a lot less of a dorm atmosphere than when everyone is on campus," said Matthew Elgin '13, a men's volleyball player, of his intersession experience. "Our team would get back from practice, and we'd be exhausted ... you watched a little TV, then you went to bed."

His team, whose pre-season ran from Jan. 8 to 14, was not alone. The women's volleyball team, the men's and women's basketball teams, and the men's and women's swimming teams were on campus as well.

These student athletes were all given a $5 food stipend per meal. "I saw them [the other teams] a little bit when I was cooking food, but they're in the same boat that we were: just exhausted," said Elgin.

Options are limited for what students can do on campus, asides from practice. Many of the campus buildings are closed, with the exception of the All Campus Dining Center (ACDC), the Retreat, Noyes and Walker Field House. Campus eating options are also limited, as the Retreat and the ACDC run on limited hours, which is one of the main reasons why Noyes is utilized to house students.

"Noyes has eight kitchenettes, which makes it a little more feasible to be able to not share one kitchen like one of the other houses," said Inoa. "It's one of our newer buildings. Its heating structure makes it greener, more environmentally friendly. We take up less energy. It just is not efficient for us, energy-wise, to leave the whole campus open and let students utilize their rooms, so we have to consolidate where students are staying."

Of his experience Elgin said, "It's a very different feel because you're there focusing on just sports." However, he had no complaints. "In an ideal world everyone getting to stay in their own room over break would be awesome, but that's not the most realistic thing you could ask for," he said.

While there was not much to do on campus in terms of entertainment, he claimed that it hardly mattered. "We were either eating, sleeping or playing volleyball ... As far as time goes, we had three practices a day, and sometimes we had to lift with that too. We were pretty much going from 8 in the morning to 9 at night, so what I did when I went back to the dorm was cook something quick, watch a little TV and go to bed."

Because of the lack of activity on campus, many of the students do not stay on campus during the entire break, but rather visit friends and relatives in other places. "Sometimes what students use intersession housing for is a place in between the places that they're visiting," Inoa added.

"They might go to visit some friends in the city, come back up here, then go visit some friends down in D.C., then come back up here, depending on what's available to them," Inoa said.

Elgin noted that the intersession pre-season practices also serve as a good way for new members to get to know the team better, and to get use to the rigor of college sports.

Overall he thought being on campus over Winter Break was a fun and worthwhile experience. "I enjoyed it ... I think Vassar did a good job."