Intended publication: The Index
The Living Room of the Campus
If you were to follow the red brick paved road of
Academy St, turn up the fork and drive past the fork on the left-hand side of
the road with the Kalamazoo College sign surrounded by blooming flowers and
drive past Hoben Hall, you would see the impressive building standing right in
front of you known as the Hicks Center. Like many of the buildings on the
campus of Kalamazoo College, Hicks Center is a long rectangular building with a
red brick façade, white windows and a grey roof. What distinguishes Hicks from
the other buildings on campus however, is not the sleek black windows that
cover the front of the building, but the four tall while columns that hold up a
part of the roof that juts out in which a large white K symbol is placed
directly in the middle. Underneath the K sign is the name Weimer K. Hicks. If
you look on a map you can see that Hicks is strategically placed far back on
campus, pass the quad and closer to Lovell Street.
As a building that houses the Mail Center, Cafeteria or
Dining Hall, Student Resource Center, security and Student Development offices,
organization rooms and a Union Desk, at any given time during business hours
there is a constant stream of students, faculty, administrators and
professionals going in and out of the building, and the inside functions well
for lots of movement. When you walk passed the tall black windows and into the
building, it isn’t difficult to be amazed by the open design of the internal
structure of the building. Every level is an open space. You could stand on the
main floor of the atrium and only have to look down to see the Mail Center on
the bottom floor, or look up to view students entering the Dining Hall.
However, while there is a constant flow of activity within, the impression that
many K students give when describing Hicks is that it is a place for them to
escape the craziness of an academy life, and just wind down by grabbing a
sandwich at Jazzman’s café, listening to music being played by Union Desk
attendants over the loud speakers, play pool in the game room or socialize with
friends in the movie room. When K students give tours of the campus and they
make a stop in Hicks they often speak of it as the “living room” of the campus.
Students go to Hicks to eat, sleep, do homework and hang out or talk with
friends, all of the key components of a college student’s daily existence.
The Hick Center was named after Weimer K. Hicks, who
served as President of Kalamazoo College (from 1953-1971) for eighteen years.
Hicks’s legacy to the school in which he served as President comes from the
fact that he was very instrumental in the development of the “K” plan as a
permanent fixture within the school-wide curriculum. The “K” plan continues to
be extremely important and serves as the groundwork for a true liberal arts
education at the college. The original “K” plan created by Hicks stressed that
students gain more awareness of the world around them by spending a term doing
an internship and at least more than one term studying abroad. When entering
Kalamazoo College students first matriculate as first-years, they are bombarded
with symbols of the successes of the “K” plan, study abroad or study away
testimonies, service learning projects or internships that previous students have
participated in, and an introduction to the Senior Individualized Thesis (SIP)
project that they will have to stress about in three years even before being
made fully aware of what it actually is. As described on the Kalamazoo College
website, the “K” plan is specifically geared towards getting the full breath of
a liberal arts education and is highly individualized for each student in order
for them to become more self aware of the world around and them and envision
their own possibilities for becoming an enlightened person by the time they
graduate. Hicks’s implementing of the “K” plan forever changed Kalamazoo
College’s reputation as an undergraduate institution to one that heavily
focused on integrating an international education into the curriculum. It is no
surprise that the top academic administrator whose namesake Hicks is named
after was the pioneer who heralded in the introduction of the “K” plan.
On any day during the week you can walk past the meeting
rooms on the second floor of the building and observe one of the many student
organizations meeting. Student Commission, Student Activities and the Index all
have permanent offices in Hicks. On Tuesday’s an informational movie or
documentary is shown via a partnership with one of the student organizations or
student advocacy groups who want people on campus to engage in issues or
support a cause. Recently, the gay alliance group Kaleidoscope played the
iconic movie depicting drag ball culture Paris
is Burning to eager audiences. Some days free food is given out at indoor
music concerts, or there are free massage days or public speakers and important
dinners or events are often held in the banquet hall. Overall, you could say
that Hicks’s multiple functions as a student center makes it just as much as a
part of the “K” plan as the academic curriculums or study abroad programs. Of
all the buildings on campus, Hicks is definitely a liberal space.
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