Loudonville
Contents
Site Information
Overview
As the book says: "Located in a serene suburb of Albany, New York, Siena College ranks as one of the Northeast's premier small, private liberal arts colleges. Founded by the Franciscan Friars, Siena focuses on developing both competency and compassion. A state-of-the-art library and science building are only two of the many new facilities developed at Siena to provide students with a unique liberal arts education. The college also recently completed construction of a new residence hall, creative arts venues, a student union, and athletic facilities. Approximately 360 students and 90 staff members are expected to attend each session."
Loudonville is a site at Siena College, a Roman Catholic school near Albany, New York. The Christianity may be weird or annoying to many non-Christians, since there are crucifixes in nearly every room (none in the dorm rooms, though). They even have monks and there are resident friars on the third floor of the girls' and boys' dorm (You see them at a rate of about one a day). Here, grass orgies were banned because it was "offensive" to the friars. This is the only site where one is not encouraged to chant "DIE! DIE! DIE!" during American Pie in the Canon.
Although the girls' dorm rooms in Padua Hall are nice, clean, air-conditioned, have nice carpets, and have single bathrooms (no communal showers or anything), the boys' in Ryan Hall aren't quite so nice, especially the basement which smells. On the last day, the girls and boys get to visit each other's dormitories, and some girls have remarked that Ryan Hall resembled a prison. There is, however, a vent expelling hot air out the building. Not one room in Ryan is air-conditioned. If you're a girl, you might still want to bring that electric fan and desk lamp so some guy in your class can borrow them for the session. Some people refer to the site as "sexist" for this reason. In 2004, however, Padua was supposedly under construction, so girls stayed in Hines instead. Though it was still better than Ryan, it was much worse than Padua, with no individual showers.
The college staff ride around on golf carts(they ran me over); the grass in the Academic Quad]] is way better than the grass in the Residential Quad]]; the food is decent; the cafeteria staff writes notices like "PLEASE PLACE SILVERWEAR DOWN THE SHOOT!!!" at the conveyor belt for "done" trays; freshman orientation and soccer camp happens during session 1; high school girls' basketball camp happens during session 2; the RAs' rooms are often huge; the bookstore is comfy; there is a very attractive butt shapped stone heart in the middle of the academic quad, where students are not allowed to sit...
History
The CTY program opened at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY pre-1994, moved to Union College in Schenectady, NY in 2001, and finally "settled down" at Siena. For this reason, CTYers refer to any of the three sites as "Hamunioniena" (or "Hamuniena" or other variants) or simply "the gypsy site."
Courses Offered
These are classes that have ever been offered at Siena. Classes marked with an asterisk (*) are the ones that are no longer available at this site.
Humanities Courses
- American Studies: The Sixties*
- Ethics
- Etymologies*
- Existentialism
- Great Revolutions
- Law and Politics in US History
- Logic: Principles of Reasoning
- Philosophy of Mind
Writing Courses
- Crafting the Essay
- The Critical Essay: Popular Culture (second session only)
Mathematics Courses
- Cryptology
- Mathematical Logic
- Probability and Game Theory (second session only)
Computer Science Courses
None
Science Courses
- Astronomy
- Fast-Paced High School Biology
- Fast-Paced High School Chemistry
- Fast-Paced High School Physics
- Genetics
- Introduction to Laboratory Sciences*
- Introduction to Biomedical Sciences
For more information, please visit the CTY '04 Siena forum site, located here.
Students
Who's attended Hamilton and/or its reincarnations
Reunions
- Black Friday -- Friday after Thanksgiving on the steps of the Museum of Natural History (New York City), noon.