The Place


Reed's campus is beautiful and very peaceful. Old-growth trees surround a series of old and new brick buildings, most of which are actually pleasing to the eye. All the science buildings are fairly new, and there's a new computer center going up too. The main building, Eliot Hall, is very oblong and unusual, but there is a nice wide-open grassy area in front of it. The campus is located in Eastmoreland, which is a fairly yuppyesque suburb of Portland.

Reed Lake (I guess it qualifies as a lake...) and Reed "Canyon" cuts the campus in half, making it seem bigger than it actually is. There wasn't a lot of wildlife activity by the lake the days I looked at it, but I guess salmon and other fish live there. They spent a few million dollars building a "fish ladder" so they could hop up into the lake. Money that could have been spent on scholarships, dammit...stupid salmon, always screwing with me...

This picture does a good job of showing the "pretty" part of reed. The building behind the happy trees is Bragdon Hall. I really wish I had pictures of the inside of Bragdon, because I think it could make anyone, at any college, break down and weep about the state of their dorm. It made me bawl with inadequacy for at least an hour...the halls are painted in murals, many of which have the half-joking communist propaganda motif (lisa simpson reading Das Kapital, Thing Two with the hammer and sickle painted on his belly). The entry area is a three-story open area with floor-to-ceiling windows, a television, and a fireplace. I can't remember, but I think the rooms are carpeted. I do remember that the furniture was all movable and the rooms fairly large. There are windows everywhere to let light in, which is good, because there isn't a whole lot of light to begin with-Portland is a dreary place in winter. It rained almost non-stop the two days I was there, although never very hard.

The only way across the canyon is the bridge. At night, blue halogen lights make the bridge look cool. Walk across the bridge at night, and you too will be cool.

the people 1