Roskie resident Andrew Cottingham works on an architecture project in the first-year studio in the basement of Romney Gym. (MSU photo by Erin Raley)

A month after moving into her super-single room in Roskie Hall, Jana Weyerbacher, 19, seems to have college figured out. At least the social piece. A self-described insomniac, Weyerbacher says her room is a gathering place at all hours because its homey atmosphere draws guests in.

"Up here we're pretty laid back," she said with a straight face. "We usually get to bed by 3 o'clock in the morning."

Friends squeeze together on her bed almost nightly for movies. Lamps create a warm, gentle lighting. The walls hold some of the large charcoal portraits that Weyerbacher, a graphic arts major, does on commission. Her refrigerator bears the likeness of Andy Warhol's famous Marilyn Monroe portrait, something Weyerbacher painted one night last winter in North Dakota. Above her mirror she's propped an image of a rakish Brad Pitt.

"I'm not one for having men all over my walls, but Brad Pitt does watch over me," said the sophomore from Kinsey, Mont., near Miles City.

Lest anyone think this is a dorm room, Weyerbacher is quick to call it a residence. The regular activities hosted by the Residence Hall Association, designed to foster friendships, make it so, she said.

Now Weyerbacher is involved in the association, having just returned from a weekend training camp where she met students from the other residence halls. She's been named the facility technician for Roskie, a job that has her monitoring game room equipment.

"I [also] check the vacuums," she said with a laugh. "That's what we all joke about."

Two days earlier she helped stage Roskie's "gallon challenge." Students from each of the 11 floors competed to see who could chug a gallon of milk the fastest. All of them vomited.

"Oh yeah," Weyerbacher volunteered. "It was pretty gross."

Roskie may be home to Weyerbacher, but to freshman Andrew Cottingham it's merely a place to catch some sleep between architecture projects and to store his outdoor equipment.

"Home is Romney Gym," said Cottingham, referring to where first-year architecture students have their basement studios. "Our residence hall is where we go for 20 minutes before we go back."

Cottingham said his Roskie room, which he shares with an architecture student from Colorado, looks like his room at home. Messy, he said, but functional. A shelf spanning the window holds two computers, a refrigerator, a microwave and a TV, not that Cottingham has time to watch.

The 19-year-old freshman from North Branch, Minn., works the desk in Roskie's lobby each weekend, including the 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings. A nap in his loft bed follows, then he's back on the desk at 1 p.m. Sunday.

It's been pretty easy being away from home so far, he said, explaining that missionary work with his church helped prepare him to be on his own.

"College is time to get out on your own and be away," he said.

He thinks of his grandfather, though, who has diabetes and leukemia and will winter in Florida again this year. The earliest Cottingham is likely to see him is next spring.

He's eager for winter, this northlander who chose Bozeman for its mountains and its reasonably priced out-of-state tuition. He talks of playing soccer in the snow and of getting up at 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings to cross-country ski before he reports for his shift at the lobby desk.

Next year he's likely to unroll his green carpet in another residence hall room, as it's convenient for architecture majors to live on campus, he said, and walk, foggy eyed, from design studio to rumpled loft bed.

written by Annette Trinity-Stevens and posted for Oct. 1, 2004