Johnstone Hall - History - Trivia

Trivia

• Popularly remembered as "The Tin Cans" or in slang shorthand as "the Stone".

• The Loggia was enclosed by glass walls during the 1970s student union remodeling, but kept its name although it no longer fits the definition.

• The lift-slab design left nearly 3-foot-wide (0.91 m) ledges around the dormitory wings, which invited a multitude of practical jokes over the years. A popular pastime was known as a "ledge party" and mostly consisted of drinking, listening to music, and sitting on the ledge. A combination of raised drinking ages and a few unfortunates who rolled off the edge while snoozing and sunbathing led to metal slugs being welded into the window frames of Johnstone rooms. Afterward, the windows would no longer open wide enough for access, putting an end to the era of Johnstone ledge partying.

• As originally designed, all three wall panels facing outward above the radiator/heater level were glass with the center panel consisting of two horizontal center-hinged panes that could be opened. An all-glass outer wall proved to yield both privacy and ambient temperature issues. A classic late-1960s Clemson postcard of the dormitory showed the outer panels covered by a mix of cardboard, tin foil and newspaper. The solid glass panes were eventually replaced by a solid fiber wall panel less temperature and modesty conductive.

• All the original dorm rooms had wooden shelving that contained a rifle-rack for two cadet firearms. After Clemson shifted from a military school to a general university, there wasn't very much use for the narrow vertical slot as nothing much would fit in the space. Before the advent of compact discs, many students stored a double stack of record albums in the otherwise wasted cabinetry.

• Johnstone - "Where your neighbors know you're going to be a father before you do". Legend has it that in the mid-1990s a student and his roommate were away at class. His ex-girlfriend called and left a message on the answering machine that "the test came back positive" and she was pregnant. By the time the father-to-be returned from class, the entire hall knew because neighbors on both sides of the room heard the machine. In fact, after the message ended, several people went out into the hall to discuss it. The father-to-be left Clemson at the end of the semester.

• Johnstone - "We like to share our music." A student was studying when his neighbor from across the hall came by. The first student complained about the music. The visitor said "If it is a problem, why do you have it on." The answer "It's not mine. It's my neighbor's."