I was having a less pleasant than usual morning on Monday so I wandered over to the student-run Coffee House in the RMC, intending to sort myself out over a cortado. As I waited, I noticed this:
At first I was puzzled because I associate “Coho” with Cohen House, but I quickly understood it to be an expression of solidarity among the Coffee House workers, more bonded apparently to that institution than to their official colleges.
And that made me smile and recollect another such expression, seen in this undated image made for the Campanile quite a few years ago:
The RMC is a largely unloved building but it continues to shelter those who need it.
Everyone knows that CoHo is Cohen House. Not those upstarts who keep bouncing from room to room in the RMC.
These kids today!
I started to say that when Lovett College opened in the fall of 1968, our kitchen wasn’t completed, so we used the cafeteria in the RMC as our commons for a few days. However, the delay may have affected freshman orientation week only — the kitchen may have been operational at the semester’s official start.
Even after the kitchen began serving food, construction wasn’t really complete. There was no barrier or lock to prohibit nigh-time raids on the refrigerators. Lots of grub ‘went missing’ as we say nowadays. In fact, some self-appointed sous chefs may have cooked a few after-hours meals.
Alas, it all came to an end when campus security posted a guard in the kitchen. C’est la guerre.
Hanszen used the RMC as a commons in 1975-1976, after our commons was destroyed by a fire during the summer of 1975. Many of us gravitated to other colleges for that year—I took most meals at Jones with my fiancée Debbie (still my wife after 39+ years 🙂 )
Interesting that you say that the “RMC is a largely unloved building”. Back in my time at Rice it was one of the main places that off campus folks “roosted”. It sort of served as the “Off Campus College” Commons. I guess other venues have taken over that role now.
I really meant that the building *as a building* is unloved. It’s got some problems. It still gets a lot of use from what I can see, especially by grad students.
Unloved only by those who can’t see its charms. It’s full of beautiful mid-century detail (and there used to be more) The more into architecture I get, the more I appreciate it.
I might have taken that photo. I didn’t, I certainly know whoever did. I was there when the sign was altered and was one of the people “lived” in that college.
I’d start looking on page 33 of the yearbooks from, hmm, 1977-81, maybe.
WE are the best college
All the others s…..
Well, you get the point.
Precisely. It’s in our song and therefore indisputable that we are the best college.
I am thinking (assuming I still able to do that function) that the alteration to the sign was done after I graduated the second time in 1979, so you might start in the fall of 1979 Hope that helps.