Question about Tour and Info Session

modestmelody
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:23:02 +0000

It appears they’ve changed the tour route recently (I noticed while I was walking through campus the other day), however, as a former guide I wanted to throw in my two cents.

First, there are several points in the tour where we could walk inside buildings. I personally avoided all but one any time the weather was good. Going inside buildings always wasted too much time and took away from my ability to answer questions. It was a tradeoff I wasn’t willing to make as a guide and many guides make that same decision. When it was cold, I would spend more time inside the buildings. Second, we do have some specific tours that are all about the inside spaces like the Physical Sciences Tour that tours lab space and the interior of most of our natural sciences departments. Third, during my college search days, I distinctly remember that going into buildings was a unique feature of tours that occurred in freezing cold weather or campuses that frequently had freezing cold weather. Anywhere that had a reasonably long period where you could stay outside was outside for 95%+ of the tour. And finally, the exception to that indoor rule was that most college tours took me inside their library. Quite frankly, this always struck me as some combination of pompous, anachronistic, and/or dumb. The absolute quiet room is not a critical feature of a campus tour. Since current Brown students operate and maintain the script and path of the tour (in partnership with admissions, but the students hold most of the power), my guess is students at Brown have agreed with that sentiment for some time.