My big brother and Mary Washington College Alum, Russel Morgan, visited campus recently and took some terrific photos — MWC has changed a LOT since 1994, but there are still many places I recognize.
The first picture is of the dining hall where I worked as a student employee — horsing around with the other kids, constantly drinking coffee and that sweet red “bug juice” punch, and adopting cookies, cheeseburgers and tater tots as staple foods. It is also where I worked countless hours on “Dishline,” the assembly-line-like workspace where I and the other kids cleaned all the dishes that were returned. Wow. That was a lot of wet work. I believe that I still smell of ketchup to this day. I indeed capitalize “Dishline,” as it is both famous and infamous, and figured largely in the formative years of many past students. If you attended Mary Wash and you know what being “on carts” was, then you are a “Seacobeck Alum.”
Also pictured, in the second photo, are New Hall and Alvey Hall. (I’m certain new Hall must have been dubbed with a donor’s name in the intervening years since I graduated.) The men and women I lived among here are among the finest I’ve ever met. To quote the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, “I Accuse My Parents,” “I threw some kickass parties here.”
In the third photo are Mason and Randolph Halls. My college girlfriend (and possibly the sweetest person I’ve ever met), Kim Haun, lived in Mason. That low-lying structure linking the two was a literal tunnel, where dorm rooms existed at the time. (We quite creatively nicknamed it “The Tunnel.”) Here is where I partied as a Freshman with Steve Miller. (No, not the musician, Steve Miller — but the irony here is that my pal Steve was a huge fan of the eponymous star and played all of his albums while we sipped rum and cokes on the weekends.) My college experience would never have been the same if Steve and his upperclassmen friends hadn’t taken me under their wing.
[EDIT — It was actually MWC Janet Walbroehl Winston who took these photos!! Russ, you scene-stealer!!!]
Seacobeck Dining Hall.
New Hall and Alvey Hall.
Mason and Randolph Halls, with”The Tunnel” in the middle.
Ball Hall.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 