This Makes Perfect Sense to Me

My old college dining hall is slated to become a faux Hogwarts dining hall tomorrow night and that reminds me of why I loved that place when I was there a quarter century ago.

It has a high goofiness quotient.

I am a 1984 graduate of Colby College and for much of my time there I ate my meals in the dining room at Foss Hall. That's Foss at right in a photo by a gent who blogs as Critical Christian and was on-campus at some point recently for his spouse's Class of 1956 reunion.

The Foss dining hall is a longish, two-story room that feels like a church hall or a manorial hall. It is entered by two stairways from the dormitory portion of the building and has deep, rich wooden walls. It would serve well as a small Hogwarts hall.

The young lady whose "inside Colby" blog post alerted me to this re-purposing of Foss also seemed delighted:

There are times when I think I couldn't possibly love Colby any more than I already do. And then they announce that Foss Dining Hall will be transformed this Thursday into the Hogwarts Great Hall, complete with Harry Potter-appropriate dining hall options, and my heart wants to implode with delight and wonder at this marvelous, oh-so-dorky school I attend.

It has me thinking back to my time at Colby and pleasant meals with Mark, Todd, Katie, Laurellie, and many others. I remember the parent's week-end when we deployed the silly cigarettes-and-ashes jello-mold (seemed funny at the time). I remember nights studying down there and week-ends when I played in various bands on that little stage.

And I remember elaborately staged, crowd-heavy stair-falls during finals. That was a tradition unique to Foss. I wonder of it is still practiced?