Community. Community. And more community. That’s what you’ll find on the north side of campus when you visit the Guffin residence hall.
Located right off of Eagle Road, Guffin sits predominately on the top of one of the main hills at Eastern. Kea residence hall neighbors Guffin on one side, while both Hainer and Gough can be seen on the other side. Kea actually connects to Guffin through a large lounge. Along with Doane and Kea, Guffin is among the older residence halls on campus.
The Breezeway, which is a small café, is located right in the middle of Guffin. The café is home to fried foods as well as drinks, desserts and snacks.
“I like the Breezeway because it is nice and it has a huge screen TV,” first year student Abraham Weiner said.
The Breezeway is also located very advantageously for those who live in Guffin, with any type of food very easily attainable. This may be a disadvantage to those trying not to gain any extra weight.
“I have been okay. I just feel bad for people with a partial meal plan who [can eat here all the time],” Weiner said.
The café also proves beneficial in the winter months, so students don’t have to walk across campus in the cold to get food, according to first year roommates Corrie Mulcahey and Sam Gauthier.
Mulcahey and Gauthier started out the year in a forced quad, and now their room is down to two people, with a lot of space.
“Now that there are only two of us living here, our room has pretty much become the hall lounge,” Gauthier said.
With the good comes the bad, and Guffin does have its share of unwanted features.
“Guffin is pretty ghetto. We don’t have air conditioning, and we can’t control the heat, so the halls are either really hot or cold. My room has stink bugs, too,” first year Erin Fries said.
“There’s no air conditioning, so during the hot summer times we all ride in agony together,” Weiner said.
On the positive side, the view from Guffin is a great feature of the building. During the soccer and field hockey season, residents can look right outside of their windows and down the hill to watch the games, according to Gauthier.
Regardless of the good and bad physical features, there is one aspect of Guffin that truly outweighs all of the others: community. The two guy halls and two girl halls have grown extremely close, and this community is what defines the hall.
“As a building, we play a lot of sports, soccer and basketball, which helps make the community really good. Along with the Breezeway, [Guffin] is just a great place to hang out,” sophomore RA Jonathan Malone said.
Malone, who will be returning as an RA in Guffin next year, thinks very highly of the people in Guffin.
“All the guys know each other, and there are just a lot of cool people,” Malone said.