Amen Hall: A Review

By JILLIAN CHENG

Past the crossed dirt paths of the McConnell Quad, Amen Hall sits in all its brick glory. From afar, it looks the same as its surrounding buildings, but upon a closer inspection you can see the kind messages scrawled in chalk across the walls, hear a muffled speaker playing pop music, and maybe even catch a couple Red Hotties coming in and out of the dorm. While every dorm may have the same red brick appearance, a look inside of Amen proves why it might just be the best dorm on campus.

Amen Hall is a medium-sized girls’ dorm opened in 1925 and home (or home away from home for all the day students) to 57 students at Exeter. It is named after the school’s seventh principal Harlan P. Amen and was built on the South side of campus between Wentworth Hall and Cilley Hall, a convenient location near the library, the Goel theater, and the gym. On the outside, Amen features a small outdoor patio and a peaceful cupola sundial. Past the two green doors, Amen includes three common rooms, an abundance of washing machines, and a tidy kitchen. In the basement sits a piano and a ping pong table for when Amenites would like to unwind.

No matter how special the architecture or facilities of Amen might be, the community of girls in the dorm is the key element that makes the dorm Red Hot. These Amenites display their dorm pride openly. “It’s very easy for me to say that Amen is the best dorm on campus,” senior and proctor Clara Peng said. “I feel like we have the perfect size, I think the size actually benefits the community a lot. Amen is the perfect middleground, it’s not super huge, but there are so many people across every floor who you can meet. You have such an interesting group of people with diverse interests, namely what sport they play, their classes, or what they want to do in life.I think that has made a group of girls who are very well rounded and able to connect with everybody.”

Amen’s size allows the community to make tight bonds, even if they are across grades. “I’d say I actually think that the Amen community is closer with each other than a lot of other dorms its size,” upper Jane Vernon said. “ I think Amen really does a good job with vertical housing; I don’t think that there’s much of a divide between who you can be friends with. I’m friends with a lot of preps, lowers, seniors, uppers, and I think that’s actually something really special.”

Vernon recalled the influence of the Amen community as a prep. “I remember a senior that I met before coming to Exeter led me to the field house and dragged me to the Amen quad by the sundial and introduced me to my proctors for the year,” she said. “That was the first time I ever met Amenites.”

Even for newcomers now, Amen still acts as a welcoming home. “I really like the community,” prep Shiloh Ffrench said. “I feel like everybody’s really welcoming and you can always find your people in the dorm. It was hard at first because I didn’t know anybody, but after maybe a week I gained friends in the dorm, my age and older.”

Every floor brings together girls from different parts of the world, each with a unique background and set of interests. Despite all these differing factors, Amenites are bonded together into a community that supports and uplifts each other.

Of course, without the faculty of Amen, the dorm would be pure chaos. The faculty of Amen act as guardians on campus to ensure the happiness and safety of the dorm’s community. In Amen, Marianne Zwicker is the dorm head, and the rest of the resident faculty include Fan Huang and Hannah Hofheinz.

Being a dorm head comes with responsibilities. “I coordinate the team of faculty who live in Amen, so I do the schedules for dorm faculty. I also coordinate the communication between the proctors and the faculty teams,” Zwicker said. “We have fac-proc meetings once a week…We talk about what’s happening in Amen, we talk about what kind of dorm events we want to do. The proctors have a lot of input there; we really leave most of the dorm events to them.”

Ever since Zwicker moved into Amen, she had always been impressed by the community. “I think when I moved here five years ago I was just really struck by the sense of community in Amen and the way that the residents all live together and have fun together and support each other with homework and life at Exeter.”

As Zwicker’s young son also lives on the second floor, Amen’s community is both welcoming to her and the rest of her family. “I feel like my family is part of this house. My son knows that the girls here are his neighbors, and he sees them at ESSO [when] they go to his school. I do feel like he has that because we live here with [the girls of Amen], and that’s a nice thing to have.”

All of the resident faculty offer helping hands whenever the community needs assistance. “I love our dorm faculty,” Vernon said. “I love check-in. They’ve been there for me, since I was a prep, always. Even if it’s just for a chat or words of wisdom, or to let me ask questions, or to rant. Anything.”

“All the student-teacher relationships at Exeter are super special,” Peng added. “[The dorm fac] have been super supportive, and they are available to talk whenever you want to.”

Amen Hall has many rich dorm traditions. These include Amen Angeling in the wintertime, Sardines at night in the Academy building, and skits on the last night of school. One particular dorm tradition that stands out from them all is Secrets Under the Stars.

“It’s always cold, it’s always rainy, it’s never perfect like how you’d imagine,” Peng said. “We all go as a dorm out to the fields and we sit in a circle and the upperclassmen get to tell stories or share secrets or pieces of advice. I think it’s really great for community bonding because you get to see everybody and it’s one of the first times beyond orientation that the dorm gets to hang out as a group.”

In all its whole, Amen is an amazing dorm with a tight community, a supportive dorm faculty team, and many fun traditions. 10/10 would recommend.