Hillsdale’s classrooms should be beautiful and aesthetic

Hillsdale’s classrooms should be beautiful and aesthetic

Hillsdale’s classrooms show be beautiful. Kate Cavanaugh | Collegian

Each advertisement for Hillsdale’s online classes reminds in-person students just how plain our classrooms really are. The YouTube ad for Professor Justin Jackson’s Genesis class features old-fashioned desks, bronze and blue globes, framed paintings, diffused lighting, and paper memorabilia tucked into a wooden-framed chalkboard. But this classroom is just a film set. Those old-fashioned desks are never used by students.

Contrast that ad with almost every classroom on campus: Plain tan walls. Leftover chalk messages like “Augustine: not a mumble rapper.” The occasional Date-a-Delt  poster. It’s functional, not beautiful.  

We don’t need to learn on a film set. But Hillsdale could do better with its classrooms. We don’t need to remodel Kendall or Lane. We could just decorate.

The best example of this is the most beloved classroom on campus: the Classics Room in Kendall 232, where many upper-level Greek and Latin courses take place. The paintings, snacks, and tea kettle say it all—students love this classroom. The seminar table is blanketed in Greek to English dictionaries. Little figurines are scattered across it: a mini helmet, a little stuffed toy owl (the symbol of the classics honorary), and a figurine of Romulus and Remus with Lupa, the wolf . In this classroom, you can learn just by looking around. Yawn during lecture? A bust of Julius Caesar will glare down at you.

But why is this the only classroom with any personality? To further cultivate a love of learning, each major should have a designated classroom. The classics room originated because someone cared enough to decorate.

“It started being called the classics room within the last decade,” says Elyssa Witsken, a classics major and former president of Eta Sigma Phi, the classics honorary. “A lot of the decorations are donations. Some are souvenirs, like the tiny replica of the Nashville Parthenon.”

Several bookshelves full of books on Plato, Polybius, and Plutarch were left by Professor David Jones, a retired classics professor. A painting by our own Professor Joshua Fincher sits atop a bookshelf. Professor  Joseph Garnjobst puts snacks out on the table to encourage classics students to study together.  And it’s rumored that many of the decorations are gifts from Professor Gavin Weaire’s parents which he shares with the classics students. 

         Not every classroom needs to be sponsored by Weaire’s parents. The college should designate several classrooms for specific majors and bring them to life through well-loved details. Each honorary could make this a yearly project for their designated major. Classrooms won’t belong to the major alone—other classes can take place there—they’ll just be a resting place for them and an expression of the students’ and professors’ love for their subject.

Decorating our classrooms would express the love for learning that each Hillsdale student and professor holds. It would help contest the commodification of education which our nation has experienced in recent years. Education at Hillsdale is not utilitarian. Students are not meant to learn in cubicle-esque classrooms so they can become productive members of society. Rather, Hillsdale intends to form each student’s mind and soul. By making classrooms beautiful—or at least well-loved—students will enjoy classes more.

Shelves of Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, Lewis, Friedman, or Hayek will inspire non-majors as they explore the core curriculum. A poster of Marie Curie, a bust of Homer, a figurine of Socrates, or a Reagan bobblehead will remind students why they love their science, English, philosophy, or politics major.  

Hillsdale’s classes live up to the marketing. Its classrooms should, too.

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