Satire: Why Cohan Needs Its One-Room Doubles

As general housing approaches and you find yourself perusing the floor plans of your prospective future homes, you might have noticed a difference in the room configurations in Cohan Hall. After years of Cohan’s exclusive one-room double housing — kindly reserved for second-years — the new pod housing has introduced the possibility of 29 new single rooms. While some consider this a triumph, the ramifications that come with these changes say otherwise.

What fosters a close-knit community more than forced proximity? Amherst prides itself on community, and nothing facilitates it better than housing over 100 bitter sophomores in one-room doubles meant to be singles. Perhaps shared hatred connects people together more than love does — you know you wouldn’t have become friends with that football-playing neighbor of yours if the two of you hadn’t found something to complain about together. Trust me, you do not want to miss out on the trauma-bonding experience Cohan provides.

Living in Cohan might also be the most efficient friendship test. No need to wait three years to realize your friend is absolutely insufferable when you can easily find out after just three weeks of living with them! If all goes well, you get to go to bed every night holding hands with the best friend you never knew you were looking for. And if it goes really well, you get great content to use in your vows at your wedding.

Housing selection teaches you that life is unfair: Here you are, reminiscing about the closet space you had last year or about your queen bed back home. This is the first time some Amherst students will have to face … hardship!? The harsh reality that you (your parents) are paying the same amount as the sophomores living in a Greenway suite is not an easy pill to swallow. You have a 4.0 GPA, your family donates to the college, you are the president of AAS — you don’t deserve living here! At least now you can get a one-up on that game of comparative suffering and use this experience for your grad school essay on how you overcame adversity.

Exercise that hippocampus! No wonder rats wander the halls of Cohan, it’s a maze. Who knew that a building could have so many half-floors? At Amherst, cognition does not stop once you exit those classroom doors. Finding your room on move-in day is your warm welcome to what’s to come in the school year.

Cohan Hall has forever been an integral part of the sophomore experience. If you are not a Cohan resident, you likely have friends living in Cohan. It has become a generational curse of sorts, a warning all freshmen hear from upperclassmen (with the exception of tour guides — “There is no worst dorm!” they all chant in unison). Part of the Cohan charm is the character-building it cultivates, and this attempt to “improve” students’ quality of living comes at the expense of their personal growth and Cohan cultural erasure. So housing: know that every time a Cohan room gets turned into a one-room single, a mammoth loses its tusks.