This is a photograph taken by the entrance of Phillips Hall, more commonly known as the Top Dog Cafe. It looks up the staircase and towards the Hillcrest House. JMU students mainly use this space to go up the hill and towards the quad or east campus after enjoying a meal at Dukes or Top Dog. Campus designers most likely built this curvy set of stairs to ease the ascension up this steep hill. I think asthetically and practically, there really isn't any way to improve this space for student use (well, it could be an escalator, but that's asking a little too much!). Since the stairs are concrete, they are pretty sustainable and will last for many years, and environmentally the space is fine as well. These stairs will forever remind me of the many times I have dreaded climbing them after stuffing my face at Dukes or Top Dog. Still- they aren't nearly as bad as the stairs near the football stadium that cross the train tracks!I think that in a way, Greenberg's article is pretty correct with respect to JMU. We have the beautiful grey stone buildings of the quad, but then a variety of other materials and colors used in the Village, Lakeside, and East Campus. In this photograph, this is evident, in that you can see the red brick material composing Phillips Hall. I think that more of a uniformity, at least on the quad side of the campus, would have made JMU even more beautiful than it already is.
-Kerri Smith
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