Forget the Confederate flag debate, smoking up next to Susan B.’s grave, or hiding alcohol from your RA — it’s time to play. With the UR’s newest playground, hard-partying students are bound to change their ways in exchange for old-fashioned, childhood fun.
How often do you stare out of your dorm room window when it’s raining and think about the past? Do you reminisce of your youth? Do you feel nostalgic about the days when you watched “Rugrats” and played “The Floor is Lava?”
With the introduction of UR’s newest playground, you will no longer feel that longing for your youth. Located on the second floor of the brand new Ronald Rettner Digital Media building is the piece of your childhood you’ve always wanted to recapture during your college years.
In the playground, students will find three plush lime-green chairs, a set of couches, an orange king’s chair, and what I’ve imaginatively named the black spinny chair. For the moment, I will focus on those last two pieces of furniture. From afar, the orange throne looks like a chair God would sit on. Bright and fun like President Seligman during orientation week, the softness of the throne calls to me. I cannot wait to settle my small white boy butt into its lush cushions. However, as I spring onto that orange beacon of hope, I arrive at the realization that the chair was made out of cold hard plastic. Cold like B stacks, hard like an orgo exam, and plastic like Regina George.
The other fun piece of furniture is the black spinny chair. Shaped like two bowls put back to back, the user sits in one of the bowls and the chair rotates. It’s actually fun. The only other thing on campus more fun to sit on then the spinny chair is my face. No longer will students troll the fraternity quad looking for alcohol or parties. Instead they’ll focus on the fun chairs and games in the Rettner playground. Their thirst for illicit adult activities will be quenched by legos and wind up toys. I mean, alcohol and legos basically have the same effect, right? I can’t remember the last time I played with legos and didn’t have regrettable intercourse with a stranger after. But I digress.
A sheet taped to the wall reads, “Welcome to the tree house. This space is for recharging your creative battery.” Of course nothing recharges me like spinning in a chair so fast that I puke all over myself (it was not the first time this weekend that happened, though). But perhaps students will use the tree house to their benefit, and perhaps the toys laid out will distract students from hardcore partying or stealing from Hillside. Did I see a student receiving oral sex on the orange throne? Yes. But I know at the end of the day, students will reclaim their youth and challenge their bright minds in the Rettner playground.
Weinberg is a member of the class of 2015.
