Who’s down to learn about some gates?! After another brief hiatus, Ra Ra Brunonia is back and better than ever (yes, I have said this before!)! As a member of the Ivy League, Brown is forced to conform to a strict gate policy: in order to proceed onto a grass-covered quadrangle, a student must walk through/beneath a gate. This policy is strictly enforced, as evidenced by this…and this…and this.

Let me just establish this up front: Brown loves gates. We walk through the Van Wickle Gates during our first week on campus, we run through the John Nicholas Brown gate when late to our American Legal and Constitutional History lecture, we even have an eatery explicitly named The Gate. Gates are to Brown as Gail is to the Ratty; you absolutely cannot separate the two.

We begin with the most regal of gates at Brown—The Van Wickle Gates. Located at the top of College Street, the Van Wickle Gate has been a staple of the Brown campus since 1901. Named after Augustus Stout Van Wickle, who was incidentally killed in a skeet shooting accident (Ed.-seriously?), the Van Wickle Gates are only fully opened twice a year: towards campus during Convocation and towards downtown Providence during Commencement. It is traditional that seniors doff their caps as the pass beneath the Van Wickle Gates after graduation. As a side note, Augustus Stout Van Wickle also donated a fence and gate to Princeton University—the man truly loved gates.  [Read more →]

There’s an unspoken rule here at Brown: The Leung Gallery is a quiet room. The mod space, located above the beloved Blue Room, has no indication of a lowered decibel but has for some reason become a sanctioned study area, known for its wonderfully high ceilings, stylish interior and silence. Those who dare to pass through too loudly are given the stink eye by the students Facebooking hard at work. Woe be the poor soul whose stomach growls uncontrollably, who types too forcefully or who scrapes their chair on the ground upon shifting positions. Depending on the time of day, it can feel more like a stuffy country club than a cozy study space. Leung scholars are relentless when it comes to volume control (…okay, fine, we’re guilty of this too).  The two of us having almost officially moved into the gallery – or the “upstairs Blue Room,” as it has been nicknamed by those who can’t pronounce Leung (again, guilty!) – we have compiled a list of scarring quiet room incidents that may deter you from ever returning to the sacred space.  We’ve also included assorted faces of Kristen Wiig to better illustrate the facial expressions typically made by those who commit the various Leung faux pas:

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After a brief decently-long hiatus, Ra Ra Brunonia is back and poised to drop some serious info about a quaint little spot known as FAVNCE HOVSE. While I may not take Latin, for me, Faunce House is associated with coffee chats, confusion over implied silence in the Leung Gallery, and overall great times. In winter, Faunce additionally serves as an oasis nestled within the frozen tundra that is the Main Green. Honestly, thank you Blue Room, thank you—you have saved more than a few fingers from the perils of frostbite.

Though most students at Brown are familiar with the ins and outs of the current Stephen Roberts (wait for it…) ’62 Campus Center, few recognize the long-standing history of the building and its progression over the 20^th Century. Faunce House was originally erected in 1904 and named Rockefeller Hall after the $75,000 benefactor John D. Rockefeller, Sr. The building included a large reading area, a smoking room and trophy gallery on the first floor, and a 400-seat auditorium on the second floor. Additionally, there existed numerous administrative offices, a barbershop, and rooms filled with f’real products (one day, one day…). [Read more →]

F’real experienced brief success as a child rapper in the ’90s

Seen this logo on placards in the Blue Room? On napkin holders in the Ivy Room? Seen that futuristic-looking blue machine in the Campus Market? Well, connect the dots next time. Turns out the machine makes super delicious, David Hasselhoff-endorsed smoothies/milkshakes from F’real.

Think a McFlurry but with a slightly more boutique feel and just as many calories (more on this later). You pick a flavor from the freezer – smoothie flavors include mango and strawberry banana; milkshake flavors include mint chip, vanilla, caramel chocolate crunch (limited edition!), and cookies and cream – get the magical silver cup in position, and watch it go to work. You even get to witness a weirdly hilarious, stylized imagination of what’s going on inside the machine on an LED screen: an attractive woman in a flannel throws in some fruit, Santa throws in some milk; you get the picture. It’s the Terminator’s answer to tipping at Coldstone Creamery. You see that picture below? That’s “F’reality.” It’s scary.

Clearly this is what George Lucas has planned for the next Indiana Jones movie

Now, to the buzz-kill. Caramel chocolate crunch was delicious. 620 calories of delicious. The other shakes tend to run 550 calories (about half from fat, a scary percentage of your daily saturated fat intake). If you can’t tell, F’real loves your arteries. In fact, at $3.69 a pop, I would say this gives a spicy with a run for its money on the ratio of calories per cent spent. For a (relatively) lighter choice, the smoothies run a somewhat more reasonable 260 calories.

Oh, and did I mention that the Campus Market in the basement of Faunce is giving out free samples from noon to 2:00 p.m. today, with a raffle for a free F’real t-shirt? #FreeFoodDigest.

Images via and via.

People, this is an incredible opportunity.

Like, seriously.

You know how Faunce is ostensibly the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center?  Rolls off the tongue like a bad lisp.  I die a little inside every time I see that name in print.  Stephen is so ridiculously invested in making things un-fun to read that he might very well be the man to whom they handed a copy of the Adobe suite and said, “Design the ProJo website.”

The point is, people with millions of dollars are naming our buildings without realizing that built into the process is a potential for batshit insanity.  But never fear, the answer is only a few hundred dollars away.

According to Brown’s “giving page” (one can only assume we are supposed to be the Shel Silverstein of higher ed), it costs a mere $3 million to name an existing building on campus.

$3 million.

Wut.  [Read more →]

Family Weekend is upon us. You should have noticed by now that campus is crawling with middle-aged moms and dads who are here to see you and get a sense of your life at Brown. In order for your parents to do so effectively, they will be infiltrating our social and academic spheres of choice to try to live and understand the Brown Experience. Be advised that parents are everywhere, and that it can be quite entertaining to observe these creatures in their unfamiliar habitat. 

The Top Three Places for Parent Sightings:

1) The Ratty: Upon entry, parents are greeted by the wonderful, angelic BDS hostess with the mostest, Gail. They are hooked on Gail’s unmistakable charm and are reeled in by the long chain of “I”s in the “Hiiiiiiiiiiii” they receive at the door. They proceed to walk around aimlessly as they try to understand the hustle and bustle; the Cajun Chicken Pasta and the epic combination of cereal, ice cream and peanut butter that constitute the Ratty Experience. For maximum entertainment, be sure to observe the confusion and fascination that comes over parents as they observe our fellow students with four plates of food and three glasses of different drinks all balanced on the Ratty’s ugly, yet intriguing trays. It was LMFAO who said “everyday I’m Rattying”, right?  [Read more →]

In case you’re running late to class and don’t have time to wait in the lines at the Blue Room, check out the table right outside the market in lower Faunce where there’s a nice man giving out samples of things like ‘Kashi Go Lean’ and ‘Special K Protein Meal’ bars!

Yay! There is now a Bank of America ATM in the lower level of Faunce!

Gawker, a media news blog, published a post yesterday by blogger Hamilton Nolan about how Ivy League schools are “the world’s worst charity.” Citing a recent $100 million dollar donation by Henry Kravis to the Columbia University Business School, Nolan argues that the large sums of money that go towards augmenting the already ginormous endowments of schools like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and…er…Brown could be put to better use.   [Read more →]

Faunce House - June 2009

For those of you who have come to this school for the prospect of an “enclave of trustafarians and children of celebrities” who “major in drum circles and semiotics,” you may have skimped on your Brown education.  While academic offerings can teach you about the psychology of making decisions and your daily dosage of sleep (8.4 hours), this new column will give you a taste of the history you walk through every day and, hopefully, a new appreciation for College Hill, past and present.  As President Henry Wriston said,* “no student can walk the paths of the College Green for four years … without learning something from the appearance, something from the atmosphere that its buildings breathe, something from the way history looks down upon him…”

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