As students of this august institution, we should be rightfully proud of — nay, inspired by — the wonderful architecture that surrounds and encapsulates our daily scholastic endeavors. The towering white columns and sturdy red bricks should inspire us to look to our storied past and to ponder (not unmindfully) the great futures that await some of us. However, among the great diversity of styles and monuments that grace our picturesque grounds, there are a few notable features present on other campuses that we sadly lack. Since we clearly aren’t capable of making good statues (there’s a good reason old George is stranded up on the roof), and since we regrettably can’t bulldoze our entire university to make way for an Oxford-style quad, the solution for our architectural woes is quite simple: fountains.
By my count, there are exactly zero fountains on this campus. This is, as I hope to convince you, nothing short of a travesty. Therefore, I would like to present the case for fountains on this campus and provide some possible locations for their placement.
Fountains have adorned our cities and institutions of higher learning for millennia. Rome, for example, built its famed aqueduct system just to accommodate the thousands of public fountains that served the Eternal City. These were not built just as simple repositories of daily water. They were adorned with statues and odes to deities commemorating victories in battle. Carved out of the finest marble, they stand today as wonders of the architectural world.
It is no accident, then, that fountains have played such a vital role in the architectural language of this nation, particularly in spaces like government buildings and institutions of higher learning. Fountains signify wisdom, perpetuity and grandeur linked with the glories of classical civilization. More importantly, fountains are signs of academic prestige on campuses across this nation. Just within our own state, institutions like the University of Virginia, William and Mary, the University of Richmond and even Sweet Briar feature fountains as prominent parts of their campus landscapes. If we want to keep up with these elite, powerhouse institutions, we simply must add water features of similar scale on our campus. It’s no wonder we keep slipping in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, given how poorly our architectural repertoire reflects our scholastic goals.
The social utility of fountains also cannot be overstated. First and foremost, they are a centralized, easily recognizable outdoor rendezvous point. A fountain is a place for people to stop and chat with friends, meet up for dates, study in an idyllic spot or even just read quietly.
Further, fountains are perfect for the sensitive little yearners in our community. What better place is there, I ask you, for a lovesick youth to toy wistfully with flower petals while wondering whether the girl who’s left him on delivered is truly the love of his life?
As a final testament to the functionality of fountains, it’s important for schools like us to have unofficial mischief hubs. Yes, we have the occasional streaking outside the colonnade (to go along with other insalubrious activities inside), but what the school really needs to maintain its “work hard, play hard” ethos is an easily accessible, highly visible public water source. Fountains are useful outlets for youthful rambunction, whether of the liquid nitrogen variety from our chemically-inclined friends, or perhaps filled to the brim with beer cans after a successful football outing. Either way, if we’re paying nearly $100,000 to be here, we might as well make the most of it.
Since, I’m sure, you’re now convinced of the utility of fountains, the natural follow-up question is “Where on earth do we put one?” Friends, there are so many prime locations for fountains on this campus. The brick patio outside Holekamp Hall is a perfect spot: flat, close to the colonnade and quiet. The chairs and tables already there would surround it perfectly, and the illustrious visitors who stay in our colonnade guest houses will have something pleasant to wake up to in the morning, provided that their peace was not too disturbed by a Glees party night.
Better yet, how about our alleged amphitheater right next to Elrod Commons? It never ceases to amaze me that our university architect, in his great wisdom, decided to totally gut our lovely amphitheater and replace it with a useless, uninspired series of grass and concrete terraces. Such waste! Instead of this geometrical nonsense, why not build a multi-level flowing fountain there to give the hard-working students stuck in Leyburn Library something beautiful to contemplate — assuming that they ever find a free moment to peer above their towering stacks of books and look at the world outside.
Finally, the patio outside of CGL, which is rarely occupied by more than three solitary latte-wielding miscreants at a time, would be another perfect location, considering its proximity to the Colonnade, the Reeves Museum and the Japanese Tearoom. It would solidify that area of campus as a hub of the humanities, arts and culture, standing in stark opposition to the domineering oppression of the science building.
And, if we’re being honest, what do we really need Washington Hall for? I know there’s an occasional Latin seminar in there but like, newsflash! Latin’s a dead language. Who’s gonna cry about it, huh? Cicero? Why not relocate this one class and the bulk of our administration to, say, the Fiji house, and replace the leering visage of Old George with an elegant aquatic temple that will surely distinguish us among our so-called peer institutions? Given his track record of impassioned yet cautious change, I’m sure President Dudley wouldn’t mind offering up his office as the starting point for so noble a goal as this.
Questions of location aside, the benefits of fountains are numerous and, frankly, apparent to anyone with a soul. Only the completely pachydermatous STEM majors among us can fail to see the beauty of an elegantly constructed fountain. To their sick and perverse minds, all they see when presented with such obvious resplendence is gallons of water wasted or tons of stone better laid elsewhere. Their minds have been poisoned by an insipid, robotic calculus of efficiencies and economies that denies beauty and leisure and which relegates the human race to a collection of numbers and meaningless statistics. To this I say, once and for all, no. It’s our duty as Americans — nay, as human beings — to resist this technocratic authoritarianism in all its forms, starting with just one fountain.
Yes, fountains are inherently wasteful. However, everything is inherently wasteful. Architecture itself is the art of inefficiencies. If we only built things based on their functionality, our great red-brick colonnade would be a collection of windowless concrete boxes, devoid of beauty and impotent to elevate our intellects to great things (much akin to our beloved law school). Frivolities, ultimately, are what make life worth living and what inspire us to reach beyond the mundane. Seeing the effort that people put into things that seemingly don’t matter inspires us to put more care and love into the things that truly do.
If fountains are wasteful, so be it. So are we. Perhaps, in listening to the eternal, quiet bubbling of a shaded fountain, we might learn how to be useless with grace.
I’m not asking for Versailles or Buckingham Palace. I’m not asking for a bare-nippled, toga-clad statue of George Washington emerging from Poseidon’s foamy chariot. Just a nice, tasteful water feature where we as a community can come together and pause for a bit of reflection in an all-too-busy world. If nothing else, it will give our permanently indentured construction company something to do after they finish tearing up literally every square inch of Cannan Green, for some reason.
