Margaret BauerWhen we look around Wash U, we see streets and residences, Forest Park and Kayak’s. Rarely do we see Fontbonne. Fontbonne, however, does exist, and despite popular myth, so do its students. Student Life decided that not enough was known about our neighboring school with a cross in the middle of its name: so we buried our snobbish tendencies to take a tour.
Fontbonne is small. There are about 2,600 students and half of these are master’s and graduates students, or what Fontbonne calls Options students. Options students study an accelerated business program at night. Fontbonne touts a 12:1 student to professor ratio and classes usually cap at 30 people.
However, just because Wash U students tend to discount Fontbonne, it doesn’t mean they discount us. Students at Fontbonne, were friendly and talkative to us arrogant folk taking their tour, but were still happy to share their stereotypes about Wash U. To put it bluntly, some consider us to be rich, intellectual snobs.
Katie Tucek, a freshman living in St. Joe freshman dorm, had two older brothers attend Wash U.
“Both of my brothers are very smart and everything,” she says. “But they aren’t the average Wash U student because they aren’t rich.”
Tucek felt the smarter-than-thou vibes while hanging with her brothers, but acknowledged that some Wash U students were exempt from her comments.
“There are people who are smart and think they are smart,” she says. “The ones I’m talking about wouldn’t even come here [to visit].”
One group of freshman girls came to a consensus about one difference between Wash U and Fontbonne. Freshman Lindsay Lewis says, “Wash U parties much more than Fontbonne, but they still manage to get good grades.”
Mary Rott, tour guide, member of Fontbonne’s student government and editor of their newspaper, the Fontbanner, admits that Fontbonne students see themselves in a sort of competition with Wash U. Both have Division III teams, and although they are in the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC), competition between the two can be heated.
“There is a little bit of a rivalry,” she says. “Because you are so much bigger, we usually concede defeat. But if we do win something, it’s a big deal.”
Rott also says that Fontbonne students know that Wash U students think of Fontbonne as a ghost campus.
“The one thing that everyone tells our students is that Wash U students don’t believe our students exist. [Some] students, especially the commuter students, are so in their own little worlds that they don’t even think of it.”
However, Fontbonne would not be opposed to getting to know Wash U better she says.
“The students I know that are the most involved would favor more collaboration,” says Rott.
And Fontbonne does have things to share. The campus seems tiny in comparison to Wash U, but the buildings have the same sort of “old-time charm” as some of those from Wash U, and somehow they manage to squeeze a lot of what makes college college into Fontbonne’s small area. For instance, they have a bookstore, complete with course books and Fontbonne paraphernalia, which Wash U students have been known to purchase from time to time. There is a small field called “the Meadow” which somewhat resembles the Swamp, where students play washers and wiffle ball on nice days.
There are several academic buildings, including a building called “Science” where you can probably guess what’s studied. Fontbonne also has a library, which, although not as comprehensive as Wash U’s, is not bad because they can borrow from many other places, including Wash U, other libraries in the St. Louis area and from MOBIUS libraries.
Although Fontbonne has a large commuter population, they also sport a handful of dorms. The freshman dorm, St. Joe, is coed with single sex floors and large floor bathrooms. Other housing options are perched in the top floors of academic buildings. The Fine Arts Building, for example, has 12 student apartments on the third floor, a theatre on the second floor and an art studio and gallery on the first floor.
More interesting than where they live and study, however, are the students themselves. Rott explained why Wash U students often think Fontbonne students don’t exist: most commute. According to Rott, 70 percent of Fontbonne’s student population commutes to school, and doesn’t often stay on campus.
“It’s very difficult to get commuter students to come back to campus,” said Rott. However, she is part of a group that organizes fun student events and tries to encourage people to stick around. “We want them to have the college student experience,” she says, which is also the reason she moved back to Fontbonne after living off campus in an apartment.
Since Fontbonne is a commuter school, it makes sense that most students are from the St. Louis area. However, there are a number of students from the rest of Missouri as well, and even a few international students, primarily from Taiwan.
Fontbonne’s student body also reflects its history. It was founded by the sisters of St. Joseph and it was all female. Today it is coed, but 70 percent female and 50 percent Catholic. No one, however, is required to attend mass or take Catholicism oriented courses. Men and women can intermix in the dorms, and some dorms comprised of suites have men and women on the same floor. However, on single sex floors, they have visiting hours for the opposite sex from noon to midnight Sunday through Thursday and noon to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Alcohol, also a big issue at Wash U, is allowed in the upperclassmen dorms if it is in a closed container. But underage drinking is strictly prohibited, and according to Rott, underage students who are in the same room as people who are drinking can be put on social probation and eventually kicked off campus. When Fontbonne students do party they mostly go off campus, usually to Brentwood, where many upperclassmen live in apartments.
Fontbonne may be small but their pride for their school is big. As freshman Bess Moynihan affectionately put it, “I love Fontbonne. I rock the Fontbizzle!”