Ranking Campus Buildings Bouse, Mouse and Touse

Alex Gervais ’28

Touse Enjoyer

As our Tripod publication schedule comes to an end for the semester, I figured it was time to answer the question on the minds of all of our loyal readers: which campus building is touse? For readers who are wondering if I’ve finally gone off the deep end this week, rest assured I’m still in the realm of sanity; “touse” means top house, “mouse” means middle house and “bouse” means bottom house. Used in pop culture (originally Burnerverse Twitter) to rank fraternities or whatever, we’re using it in a much better and more intelligent way here by instead ranking our amazing campus buildings. 

Bouse:

The FOrg Building

I mean who’s shocked that I put this here? Not only do I vehemently disagree with their hiring of the very people who are tearing our country apart and most everything the minor stands for, the building just looks kind of bad. It’s very much in the classic New England colonial style, but there’s something just off about it… maybe I’m just triggered. On Vernon Street this gets brutally mogged by the Center for Urban and Global Studies (goatcel status) and even Psi U. Brutal bouse. 

Mather Hall

Sneaky one of the ugliest buildings on campus. While it does house the wonderful and amazing food that I so deeply enjoy eating everyday, the outside is fundamentally uninspiring, especially on a campus with as good architecture as we have. The interior is plastered with similarly uninspiring catchphrases about how much carbon we consume whenever we eat at Mather and how good Chartwells is at eliminating waste. If I wanted to get lectured at while eating questionable food I’d attend one of those common hour talks we constantly write about in the news section. Brazen bouse. 

Mouse:

Jackson Hall

In terms of first-year housing, honestly not that bad. I spent my first-year at Trinity in a two room double on the first floor of Jackson and it was a solidly okay experience. While our bathroom was decently nice, the heat was blasting around the clock and the whole place just kind of had an eerie pre-Cold War vibe. Would I live there again? Definitely not. Did the dorm bring me lifelong friends? For sure. Modest mouse. 

Life Sciences Center

This seems like it would be the easiest bouse pick on the list: it was about 85 degrees in most of the classrooms last week, all of my boring classes are there, it has the most awkward bathroom on campus and many think it looks just downright ugly. Yet, the LSC has a special place in my heart. It’s the weird, off-putting, brutalist ugly duckling of a building on our campus of astounding architecture. The walk to my 8:30 calculus class would be downright depressing if it wasn’t for the floor to ceiling windows lining its hallways. Menial mouse. 

Touse:

The Chapel

I mean probably the easiest pick on this list. Prominently featured on genuinely everybody’s Instagram story, it’s the truly gorgeous centerpiece of our campus, the type of building that you can just stand and marvel at for a few minutes. Whenever I’m driving back to Trinity, it’s the sight of the Chapel in the skyline that signals I’m almost back to this wonderful campus. While I’ve yet to attend an actual service at the Chapel (apologies to my New England Catholic ancestors), the other events they hold there have a certain gravitas that can’t be replicated anywhere else on this campus. True touse. 

Scully Center

I’ll be honest, before it opened I may have been one of the bigger Scully haters around. I wondered why we were building more squash courts, why we needed conference rooms at an athletic facility, why it took them the same amount of time to build a new athletic center as it did for them to fix the HVAC equipment under the LSC quad. My concerns were laid to rest the first time I used the stationary bike in the cardio room. Scully turned working out at Trinity from a slightly awkward, unseasonably warm experience into a genuine good time. The squash facilities are fantastic (shoutout Trinity Squash Club) and the NARP weightroom no longer feels like I’m being watched by Big Brother. Terrific touse.