This is a photo essay assignment for my Convergent Journalism class. The photo slide show features pictures from the fourth floor of Mazzuchelli Hall, the new wing of residential rooms.
1. The hallway of Mazzuchelli -- a few feet away from the entrance to the new wing for resident students on a Saturday afternoon. While the inside of the rooms were completely renovated for students – the hallway has remained the same. According to Sr. Crapo, the fourth floor used to be one big room in 1922 before it was divided up into individual rooms for the sisters.
2. Valerie Antunes works on her list of internships that she plans to take over the summer on a Saturday afternoon. She lives in room 481 on the fourth floor of Mazzuchelli Hall. She says that the reason why she chose to live on Mazzuchelli was due to living at the Priory last year. She didn’t like having to rely on the shuttle to get to and from the Main Campus.
3. Room 460 resident Lia Rainey, senior, is fixing her diorama which she did “for the hell of it” She’s a Studio Art and Sculpture double major with an Art History minor. Her diorama is a compare and contrast between cubicle and landscape. She chose Mazzuchelli Hall because she liked how the rooms looked – i.e. the amount of wall space and the walk-in closet. Also, during the showing of rooms last spring, the sisters showed off the rooms, which Rainey appreciated. Since the sisters previously occupied the space, Rainey thought “it won’t be dirty” because of that.
4. Lia Rainey is surfing through facebook.com on her laptop Tuesday night after her night class. She is excited to find that some photos of her semester-long London trip (from August 2007 to December 2007) have been posted by fellow participants. Since she didn’t have a camera with her during the school Study Abroad trip, Rainey asked others to take pictures for her.
5. On a Tuesday night, Michelle Nowak, junior transfer student and room 477 resident, is showing a picture of her sister who she doesn’t see as often now that she’s at Dominican. She chose Mazzuchelli because she heard that Mazzuchelli Hall was going to be a new housing option. Nowak thought it would be interesting to live in Mazzuchelli. Due to the housing shortage and being a transfer (low priority on housing lottery list), she knew that her other option would be to live at the Priory. She’s grateful to get to live in Mazzuchelli and not have to commute from the Priory to Main Campus.
6. Michelle Nowak is holding a tag graffiti painting that her friend, Adam who is a tattoo artist, painted for her. He usually does tattoos, but Nowak encouraged him to do this painting. She likes to look at it during study breaks and try to find Adam’s name, which is hidden amongst all of the swirls in the painting. She also has a body tattoo of the cherry blossom on the painting.
7. The staircase leading down to the third floor of Mazzuchelli Hall. The sisters occupy the third and second floors of Mazzuchelli Hall. “We’re lucky we still have the Priory,” Sr. Jeanne Crapo, University Archivist, said. But this works out for the best since the number of sisters has been dwindling in recent years anyway. Currently, there are 16 sisters living on the second and third floors of the hall. Sr. Crapo currently lives on the second floor of Mazzuchelli Hall, but she has lived on the fourth floor as well. Last year, the fourth floor was divided up between faculty offices and rooms. With the addition of Parmer Hall, offices previously on the fourth floor have been moved to Parmer.
8. One of the main reasons why Lia Rainey chose Mazzuchelli is because she “loved the wall space”. The slanted ceiling offers plenty of wall space to put up postcard sized pictures, which were mostly bought from London during her Study Abroad trip there last year. She found the pictures in a shoebox at a London thrift store. Near the top is a map of London that Rainey used during her trip.
9. On a Saturday afternoon, the mirror in Lia Rainey’s room shows a glimpse of the green tapestry that she put up over her window at the beginning of the year. The room on the fourth floor did not have blinds on the windows at the start of the year, but recently Maintenance came in and inserted the blinds on to the windows. Rainey still keeps the tapestry over her window and admits she didn’t notice the blinds had been added until someone pointed it out to her.
10. There is an empty room in Mazzuchelli Hall that looks like it was used as a kitchen area at one point in time. There are some “tiny rooms” according to Sr. Crapo that are just too small, so they don’t end up being used at living spaces. Looking inside of the room, there were a lot of cabinets meant for food storage. It is surprising to see an empty room considering the housing shortage. The housing situation is getting worse considering this year’s freshman class has 418 freshman residents according to Donna Carroll, Dominican University president. Compared to 296 freshman residents for the class of 2009, this increase can not be overlooked.
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