A makeshift balcony offered space for small rebellions.
It started with an X-Acto knife and a hairdryer. About six years ago, outside the window on the third floor of the spiral staircase in Branford Entryway E, Kara noticed a small stone balcony. The perch was only about eight Converse wide, bracketed by shin-high stone walls. Two of its sides hugged the entryway’s curved body—slanting up to stone tiled roof and kissing the narrow window. Kara tried to open the window to step onto the ledge, but the window was sealed shut. So she melted the plastic with the hairdryer, X-Acto’d through the goo, and officially liberated the Branford Balcony.
Or, at least, I think that’s what happened. I’ve never met Kara. Two of my suitemates did, when we were first-years and she was a senior. One of my suitemates remembers talking to her at a suite party. The other swears it was in a dining hall. Like the history of Yale itself, the story of this balcony has been constructed by many, often conflicting, testimonies.
The balcony became my I-know-a-spot spot. My let-me-show-you-somewhere somewhere. Everybody wanted to show it to their friends, but nobody wanted it to be known. It was a corner; an overlook; a place to watch the moon; a safety hazard; a gossip hideout; a locus of conversation, cigarettes, alcohol, weed, and make-outs.
My first-year suite joined in the unofficial lineage of the Branford balcony, conveyed mostly by passed-down stories and light littering. It certainly wasn’t as glamorous as other parts of Yale’s campus. Though we lived just a floor below, getting onto the perch was pointedly inconvenient. My suitemate Jamie described it as “super whimsical.” Kate had a different take: “that shit used to scare me a lot.” Simply put, you must:
1) Step up onto the metal handrail of the spiral staircase.
2) Wedge your fingers in the narrow window frame. Try not to worry that they’ll get smushed; they probably won’t.
3) Hoist yourself and pray.
“It’s kind of a collective effort to get on,” my suitemate Gianna explained. “It’s like: please hold my phone while I clamber up and jump up the stairs to try to get up there.”
During our time in Entryway E, my suite and I frequently journeyed up the stairs to perch on that ledge. We sat with the rustling of leaves, the thud of hurried steps below, the constant opening and closing of doors in the entryway. It became our place—a shared spot apart from the supervision and pressures of other Yale spaces.
“It wasn’t hidden; it wasn’t private; it wasn’t secret,” my suitemate Kate said. “Yet somehow it also was.”
For as long as I knew it, the balcony bore remnants of this secret life. It’s been home to a souring bottle of red wine, mysterious crumpled papers, discarded blue face masks. Last September, it hosted seventeen cigarette butts, a crumpled Starbucks pastry bag, and a half-full Purell dispenser with liquid that was slightly green.
“If you’re wearing white pants, you probably shouldn’t sit there,” my roommate Lauren reminded me. “And it’s not comfortable at all. And you don’t really want to lean against anything.”
In the midst of the rebellion, an air of fear pervaded the balcony. There were the rational worries—falling, getting locked out, staining your pants. But there was also a quieter hum to the space. Being so high up and out of sight created the all-consuming feeling of invisibility.
“For the most part, if you’re up there, no one knows you’re there,” my suitemate Beth said. “Everyone walking below you, no one knows.”
This sense of removal, when braved together, turned into comfort. My suite and I felt free of the sterilized world of Yale. Our conversations moved from tentative high school gossip to divulging fears and five-year plans.
This September, Yale Facilities installed two shiny metal screws to either side of the window’s handle. A small laminated sign, haphazardly taped to the glass windowpane reads:
Do Not Open Window and Use Balcony
This is a University Violation
Violators will be subject to ExComm
No Questions Asked
I did, however, have some questions. When I asked Branford Facilities Superintendent Ian Hobbs about the closure, he had a simple answer: “It’s a safety thing… It’s just dangerous.” If people walked or sat on the balcony, he explained, they could crack the non-load bearing roof and create leaks.
The balcony isn’t a balcony at all. It’s ornamentation, never meant for human feet. When Branford was built in the early 1920s, I doubt they planned on the newly minted Collegiate Gothic lending itself to such illicit activities.
But students have a way of finding themselves in places they don’t belong. Hobbs remembered having the window screwed shut years ago. He didn’t think much of it again, until he saw a black folding chair peeking over the turrets this August. Apparently, the screws got loose.
The balcony is impossible to detach from the splendor of Yale. For one, it stares Harkness Tower in the face. Everything about that 216-foot-tall Goliath has been carefully planned: each foot commemorates a year from Yale’s founding to the tower’s construction. Climbing its 284 steps requires an appointment—and supervision. Harkness and the balcony peer over Linonia Court, which is named, of course, after the Linonia Literary Society. Entryway E is dedicated to James Fenimore Cooper, one of the first American novelists. These spaces demand sanctioned activity and assert tidy meanings. The balcony resists this order.
I thought about unscrewing the new set of hardware sealing off the Branford balcony. But I don’t want to get ExCommed. Besides, I’d be missing the point. It’s not for us anymore—not now that I’ve talked to administrators about it, not now that there’s a sign there stamped with an official Branford seal. Still, I’ll remember the way the moon looked from up there. We stared at it together: full and bright and confessional enough that we could believe, even if just momentarily, that we were the only ones really seeing it.
–Abbey Kim is a senior in Branford College and former Editor-in-Chief of The New Journal.
Illustration by Alicia Gan.