Many colleges may have been founded on a hill, but no college—to my knowledge at least—has a hill quite like Foss Hill. On good days, it’s the center of the social scene. It’s the place you have daydreams about when you’re in that government class in PAC overlooking the field. What doesn’t happen on Foss Hill? That is beauty of the place. There is no golden rule, but if you can do it indoors, you can do it on the hill. So, in order to find out what happens on Foss, I spent last Sunday basking in the heat on the hill with my notebook. No, this is not investigative reporting. You’ll have to attend Wesleyan in the fall to get the full story.
On warm April days such as these, the hill is the place to see and be seen. How does this happen? Well, I watched numerous people walk along the base of the hill, using their hands to block out the sun, looking up at the hill for familiar faces. But people can look like ants from the base of the hill, so it’s hard to stand out from the crowd, especially if you’re fully dressed. For total anonymity, the most inconspicuous location is the top of the hill.
The number of people sitting on Foss peaked around 3 p.m. I estimated over 150 people, one dog and two pet rabbits on the hill. There was eating, tanning, stalking via binoculars, ultimate Frisbee, baseball, gossiping, guitar-playing, sight-seeing, streaking, wrestling, hula hoops, cigarette breaks, flash parties (okay, so this one hasn’t happened since last year), concerts, hook-ups, bikini tops, hookahs, half-naked bodies, naked bodies, the Boogie club and some reading (but not very much).
The one thing about the hill, though—and everyone I talked too agreed—is that time there is suspended. By the end of the afternoon, few knew for sure how long they had been on the hill that afternoon. Wearing a watch doesn’t make it any easier to keep track of time. “Once you Foss, you don’t want to get off.”
Some students shared some pretty funny Foss Hill stories. Most of them involved rolling down the hill, mostly naked, and in one instance, a rash ensued. But the most interesting Foss Hill memory I heard was last semester’s slip-n-slide. The details are lots of tarp from Home Depot a slide that went from the top of the hill to the bottom, and a hose that connected to the Observatory. Unfortunately, Public Safety arrived before the crowd could properly christen the slide, so, sources told me, everyone went for one mass slide down the hill before Public Safety broke it up.
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