Big Plans and Frying Pans

New Desert Park and Garden at Holden Suite

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holdenhallpicThe unofficially named Holden Desert Park and Garden, which fills the gaping hole in the ground where historic Holden Hall once stood, is also very convenient. 22 seconds more convenient to be exact. Pre-park, the food-driven primal journey to McConnell Dining Hall lasted an excruciating 1 minute and 45 seconds at a food-driven pace (2.9 miles per hour according to Snapchat) from the popular turn-off point of the southeastern corner of Mead Hall. Park construction completed, that’s down to 1 minute and 33 seconds. For PZ students who trek to the dining hall twice a day, they can expect to save up to roughly (very roughly), 1 hour and 40 minutes per semester. Not much extra time, but everything counts in college. That’s 44 more seconds per day to snooze, a 44 second head-start to classes after meals, 44 more seconds to get in those grad requirements, 44 more seconds daily to enjoy “the best years of our lives.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like Pitzer’s desert indigenous Xeriscape, being able to enjoy the good life to the fullest extent on the Park is a little rough around the edges in its current state. Two skeletal benches are situated in the center, providing six butts worth of seating. Opinions on the park range from dazed confusion to optimism about the space’s future. Its physicality and topography has been compared to a “bumpy frying pan”, having the potential to cook students alive when the temperature inevitably breaks triple digits again in the Spring, and just generally “looking like the desert.” Mirages aside, the vision for the Garden will expand Pitzer’s open art policy with an increase of art-in-the-open. A sculpture garden will be installed, murals painted, and seating added to admire the view. Think rock cushions, and other contradictory seating fitting an oxymoronic “desert garden” concept.

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holden2Students will have somewhere to sit their butts down in the Spring. For the Fall time being, if you hate the color green and you like to eat, your life at Pitzer has just been improved.


Posted by Kara Powell ’15, Media Studies and Organizational Studies

Kara Powell Diversity Intern