The FishPolls
Written by Victoria Kelly
At least once a day, many Hillsdale students make the journey between meals in the Grewcock Student Union and classes or study sessions in Lane or Kendall Hall. Most walk under the library colonnade, and in so doing, walk by the “Fishbowl”—a room in Mossey Library with big windows (which make it feel like a fishbowl) that face both the walkway and the Quad in the middle of campus. It’s a seminar-style room that is often used for classes, information sessions with librarians, and club events. For many students, it’s a favorite study spot with its environment saturated with natural light, its proximity to friends walking by, and its two walls of chalkboards.
It’s also a great spot to put up polls.
Now and then, I, like many other students, will walk by this spot and see that a question has been posed for all of campus, written in big letters on the most obvious of the chalkboards. Sometimes there will be students studying and manning the poll, such as Zech Steiger, ’24, and Daniel Ledoux, ’24, two military veteran students who started them, some of their friends, or other students who don’t even know them but have picked up the tradition. It is an unspoken rule that if there are students in the room (so long as it is not hosting a class), anyone walking by may lightly tap on the window and hold up the number of fingers corresponding to the ordinal number of the choice for which he wants to vote.
When no one is manning a poll, students who wish to vote may simply walk in, pick up a piece of chalk, and add the tally mark for their response. Sometimes those who would normally just walk by will be waved down by their friends and cajoled to vote. Other times, a passer-by will have such strong opinions he simply must walk in to say hello and give an elaborate quasi-dissertation on the topic.
The polls show up randomly and are usually erased by library staff overnight. Their topics are diverse, sometimes matching the culture on campus (including shared experiences such as finals week and Hillsdating, the phenomenon in which two people who seem to be romantically interested in each other constantly study and spend time together even though they’re not actually dating), and at other times seeming almost completely random. Yet they serve to connect the work we do here with the cultural quirks and inside jokes that develop within overlapping classes.
Here are a few examples of polls I’ve seen over the last couple of years:
Poll #1: Who should be the next Liberty Walk statue?
1) Orange Croc guy (a student who became famous, though to many nameless, for his choice of footwear)
2) Robert E. Lee
3) Chief Rogers (our Associate Dean of Men)
4) Kyle Rittenhouse (who had been recently vindicated in court at the time of the poll)
5) George Roche (the College’s 11th president)
6) General Grant (the counter option to General Lee)
Poll #2: What is Hillsdale hiding? (This was a poll I could especially appreciate after a class with Dr. Dave Stewart in the History Department on common conspiracy theories)
1) Lizard men in the tunnels
2) The Loch Ness monster in the Arboretum
3) Bigfoot in Hayden Park
Poll #3: What is your favorite form of caffeine?
1) Coffee (spoiler alert: this one won by a landslide)
2) Monster
3) Red Bull
4) Celsius
5) Tea
6) Bubbl’r
7) Bang
Poll #4: How do you procrastinate?
1) YouTube
2) TikTok/Instagram Reels
3) TV/movies
4) Reading
Poll #5: Who is your favorite Anglican?
1) C. S. Lewis (possibly one of the most popular figures on campus)
2) Richard Hooker (an influential theologian)
3) Henry VIII (the king of England, immortalized by his number of wives)
4) Dr. Larry Arnn (our college president)
5) St. Bede (an early historian)
And, finally:
Poll #6: What’s your mood? (This, though inexplicable, was one of the most popular polls I’ve seen.)
1) Yes (76 votes)
2) No (27 votes)
3) Maybe (31 votes)
4) Perchance (41 votes)
These and other more controversial polls (ranging from whatever political topic is current to “What is acceptable before marriage?”) have become incredibly popular with students. Their anonymity–and their separation from the normal modes of expression that are the face of the College, such as the Collegian–allow a more realistic and balanced engagement with the variety of opinions that do coexist on campus.
Do you have any opinions on these polls or ideas for what the students could put up next? If you get a chance to swing by the library Fishbowl on our campus, you’ll have to keep your eye out for a poll–or maybe even share some inspiration for the next one.
Victoria Kelly, ’24, is a proud country girl from upstate New York. On the rare occasion she is not studying or hanging out with all her favorite Hillsdale people, you can find her debating politics, practicing Tae Kwon Do, or swing dancing, preferably outside under the stars.
Published in October 2023