Hidden away from the crowds and bustle of the main dining hall, the Gazebo Room offers a quiet spot to enjoy lunch.
The conveyor belt in the Gazebo Room whines as if it has an ache in its side that just won’t go away. It echoes in the back half of the room and hums in the front. When a tray gets put on the belt, the noise intensifies, squeaking and vibrating.
And then, every few minutes, the sound suddenly stops. Silence. Then it starts its groan again.
No one seems to mind.
The 30-odd inhabitants of the Gazebo Room move in shifts, filtering in and out, usually announcing their departure by plopping their trays on the conveyor belt. They all know it’s their secret, the room with the Monet paintings and the bicycle perched on the wall and that enormous white gazebo smack-dab in the middle of everything.
The name itself — “The Gazebo Room” — sounds funny and looks out of place on its sign at the edge of the main purchasing area in the South Campus Dining Hall. Gazebos aren’t supposed to go in rooms. Then again, college dining halls aren’t supposed to be places of solace.
At 12:49 p.m. on Feb. 19, gray rain splashed the windows. Nicole Kloorfain, a freshman enrolled in letters and sciences, and her friends took up tables on the room’s left side. She’s a daily. She and her friends sit together almost every day in the Gazebo Room, laughing and chatting together. She remembers when a friend fell out of a chair while eating. Friendship draws them back to the room.
“It’s like the hidden secret of South Campus,” Kloorfain said.
It was originally a faculty and staff dining room and is now configured to seat students, too, said Bart Hipple, Dining Services spokesman. The gazebo is 15 years old and acts as the room’s “anchor,” he said. Now, it’s only open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The daily cast of characters fluctuates. Some stumble into the room by chance and steal a moment to take it all in. Others know it as a regular spot. The rest are somewhere in between.
Erica Williams, a sophomore economics major, is a finder. Roped in by a friend while in the stir-fry line, she meandered into the Gazebo Room, unaware. She sat with two friends she met freshman year. Everyone at the table had the last name Williams, though none of them were related.
Williams started to find the beauty in the room that day, calling it one of the “finer things about the diner.”
The room’s inhabitants are a curious group. They obey dining hall rules and generally sit far away from one another with large personal space bubbles. A single person can take up an entire table. Space is copious, and they like it that way.
People sit alone in the room for various reasons. Chandini Narang does it four days a week because she can and she wants to — when she’s alone, she doesn’t have to worry about entertaining others. She’s a lone ranger.
“It’s just a time for relaxation and reflection,” said Narang, a freshman biology and English major.
She said the Gazebo Room is one of the only places on the campus where sitting alone isn’t met with judgment. In the Gazebo Room, solitude is welcome. In the Gazebo Room, it’s OK to be alone.
By 1:45 p.m., just 10 people were left eating there. The room was done for the day.
So the diners stack their trays on the conveyor belt, the lone rangers and the dailies and the finders, and head across the stairs to reality. The gazebo still stays white and shiny, the conveyor belt whirring on into forever.
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