{"id":17860,"date":"2022-04-21T20:15:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T20:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=17860"},"modified":"2026-02-27T22:40:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:40:20","slug":"where-we-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2022\/04\/where-we-lived\/","title":{"rendered":"Where We Lived"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Talia Bank \u201923<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most weeknights last fall, you could find Andie Walker \u201923 and her friends bonding over cooking and sharing vegetarian meals together in an on-campus residence hall. They chopped, grated, and saut\u00e9ed in a bustling kitchen and enjoyed common spaces with high ceilings and tall windows, a function of its location directly underneath the Macalester Stadium\u2019s seating sections. It\u2019s a unique housing option, by design: each year, up to twenty students live in the Veggie Co-Op, which has served as an intentional meat-free living community since 1992.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Walker settled into her temporary home, she started to wonder about the history of the Veggie Co-Op, as well as the nearly two dozen other student housing options on campus that range from traditional residence halls to language and special-interest housing. She turned her questions into an independent study for her digital history communications major, delving into Macalester\u2019s archives and creating a digital timeline to visualize the history of student housing. We asked her about the process\u2014and what she learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: How does your timeline project align with your academic interests and major?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: In my sophomore year, I decided to design my own digital history communications major.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really enjoyed my history classes and my computer science classes, but I didn\u2019t see a lot of opportunities to combine them. I took a very interdisciplinary class called \u201cIntro to Data Storytelling\u201d and it got me thinking about designing a major that had to do with using software to do research, but also communicate history in a way that\u2019s more accessible to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Why did you choose a digital format for the project?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: The internet has often been used just for converting analog versions of media like books into web pages: a huge block of text that you just scroll through. But there are other options for communicating that are more suited to being online, or actually designed to live on the internet: for example, clicking through an interactive map or exhibit. I thought that would be a really interesting avenue to go down for history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What materials did you use to compile the timeline?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: I started by looking at the college catalogs, which was a tedious process, but each catalog\u2019s PDF is searchable. Any time housing information changed, I would make a note of what was added or what happened. That took a long time, but then I had a good understanding of what halls even existed\u2014a lot of buildings don\u2019t exist anymore, so we never talk about them and wouldn\u2019t even
know to look them up. After that, I visited the archives and looked at old photographs and newspaper clippings. I also looked at The Mac Weekly<\/em> database. There would be tons of letters to the editor in every edition. It seems like it was more how the college communicated; whereas now that happens mostly on the internet, and I thought that was really cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What stood out to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: I read anecdotes from people who had lived in Wallace, which used to be a women\u2019s hall, and almost all of the stories were about residents running to get back in time, or sneaking through windows to avoid getting in trouble for not making curfew. I was really shocked because I thought it made sense for that kind of curfew to exist in the \u201930s and \u201940s, but I was really surprised that it continued to exist until the late \u201960s. And during that time, men were only allowed in certain parts of Wallace Hall\u2014one student remembered the men from Kirk Hall singing up to the windows. That was really a shock to see that kind of restriction had existed gender-wise so late into our history; there was a lot of separation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also noticed that in historical Mac Weekly<\/em> issues, people would write in their own voice instead of taking a more journalistic tone, which seems to happen more today. People would be like, \u201cThe college is thinking about building a dorm in the stadium. That is such a bad idea. Why would you ever do that?\u201d I thought that was funny. I lived there, and it\u2019s great\u2014it\u2019s one of the nicest places I\u2019ve lived on campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

 <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We asked Andie to share five chapters of student housing in Mac\u2019s history that stood out to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1940: Life at Wallace Hall<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Wallace<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMany halls in Macalester\u2019s history practiced self-government. Students often elected their leadership: A 1940 Wallace Hall constitution explains that a president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer will govern the hall, in coordination with faculty and staff. The constitution also features bylaws for living in Wallace, including quiet hours after 10:15 p.m. every night, during which residents should wear \u2018bedroom slippers with soft heels\u2019 and avoid practicing musical instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1943: The Home Management House<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Residents<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Home Management House was established as a new option for female students who, according to The Mac Weekly<\/em>, helped to cook, clean, and manage the house. At the time, Macalester offered a major and minor in home economics, and a home management class in the department served as a prerequisite for living in the house. The house continued to be an option for students through 1950.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1946: Macville<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Macville\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter the end of World War II, Macalester saw an influx of veteran students. In 1946, the Federal Public Housing Administration constructed several temporary homes, meant to house thirty-two married and thirty-two single veterans attending Macalester as part of an effort to accommodate the growing student body.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1966: Students Fed Up with Dorm Rules for Women<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Mac<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince Wallace Hall\u2019s opening, women living in campus housing were required to return to their dorms by specific times at night. By the 1960s, many students were fed up with the policy. In 1966, The Mac Weekly <\/em>conducted a survey of seventy female students, 90 percent of whom said they were in favor of changing the restrictions. \u2018Any woman twenty-one or twenty-two years old certainly can\u2019t be emancipated\u2019 when she has to be in at 12 on weeknights, argued one respondent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2003: Gender-Blind Housing Proposed<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Mac<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn fall 2003, the college proposed a pilot program that would test out gender-blind housing in order to provide increased support for LGBTQ students. News of the proposal caught the attention of alumni and reporters across Minnesota and nationally, with some in favor and others against.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a digital timeline, Andie Walker \u201923 knits together a history of Mac\u2019s student housing.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":17903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17860"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30777,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17860\/revisions\/30777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}