Ugly Undergrads? Sure! But our Campus?

According to the blog campussqueeze, Carnegie Mellon is the 5th Ugliest College Campus in the United States. I’m not going to lie, when my friend read the headline, I thought they were talking about how unattractive our campus population is, and well that’s pretty old news. We know we are ugly, and I think we are pretty proud of that. We all know that if we are really that ugly, we must be that smart.

But no, this retarded blog post was about how unaesthetic our actual campus buildings are, which is ABSURD! Carnegie Mellon is a beautiful little Oakland oasis. Sometimes, late at night when I am walking back from the library, I will just look out to Hamerschlag hall, or look behind me into the intricate niches of CFA, and I am simply refreshed by how classically lovely it is. Alright, so maybe it’s not that dramatic, but still it’s pretty close.

I love the yellow brick and I especially love the detail and geometry of the Hornbostel architecture, the detail, from the heavy copper doors to the spiral stairways, to the rotunda of Maggie Mo. Baker hall (my humanities home base) really feels like the sacred, hallowed halls of learning that you imagine a college would have.

I’ll give them Wean hall, which is our computer science building. Wean is, well, as attractive as a big, brutalist, block of concrete could be. But Wean isn’t even that bad, and I can’t imagine our campus without it. “Mother Wean” screams CS, like no other building could.

Overall, our campus is open, organized and uncluttered. We have a few hodgepodge buildings, but most of them follow the same style within thier group. Warner, Hunt, Donner, Scaife, in one category, the original Hornbostels, the newer UCand Purnell (which still stick to the brick schema) and Wean, which is in a category all it’s own. I believe Hunt and Scaife were built by the same architect, thus the similar style for them as well.

I know that part of my decision to come to Carnegie Mellon was based on how much I loved being on the campus. It really is quite nice. I can’t imagine why else they would come all the way to Pittsburgh to film the movie “Smart People” which comes out in May. “Wonder Boys” was also filmed here, because are campus IS pretty. Seriously, before you knock Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon, give it a chance. Our campus is super, and Pittsburgh is more than the steel town it used to be decades ago. If you like Emory and Northwestern, you have to give Carnegie Mellon some cred. Those campuses were created in the same architectural vision.

I know there really wasn’t any solid rationale for the campusqueeze post, and a recent high school junior that is making the admission tour rounds, realistically would do a better job, but still, I thought that I had to defend my alma mater, because well if we can’t get points for having good-looking people, we need to help our buildings get the loving they deserve. Maybe we aren’t the most beautiful campus as compared to the Spanish-style architecture of some of the California and Florida schools, but top 20 ugliest? Give me a break.