Charlotte Slayton ’27
Contributor

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Howe Hall, built in 1914 along with Taylor Hall as one of the first two dorms at Loomis Chaffee, is an upperclassmen girl’s dorm. Formerly named Mason Hall, the dorm was redesignated as Howe following a Student Council initiative in 2017.
“The man, Mason, they learned—or they were thinking about—how he was pretty violent towards the indigenous communities that inhabited this land,” said Howe Dorm Head Michaela Chipman. “They didn’t feel like it was right to honor his name and have a dorm named after him.”
Howe, newly renovated in the past couple of years, has a brand new kitchen and great facilities.
“It is one of the newer dorms on campus, so the facilities are amazing, the bathrooms are amazing, the rooms are really nice, and the common room is really nice too,” Howe Resident Assistant (RA) Chelsea Ndzana-Zogo ’24 said.
The general consensus on campus toward the dorm is very positive.
“The people are really good,” RA Emma Hannah ’24 said. “I definitely have a lot more friends in my dorm this year, but I think it’s just like a community atmosphere in here.”
The faculty who live in Howe, in addition to Ms. Chipman, are Dean of Academics and Curriculum Mr. Timothy Lawrence and Modern and Classical Languages Faculty Ms. Maria Vazquez Sanchez. Many other affiliates also come and do check-ins.
“Our faculty [are] really supportive and willing to get to know everyone in the dorm on a personal level,” Ndzana-Zogo said. “So they know about us more than just as students, or just people who live in a dorm, but also as community members in Howe.”
One of Ndzana-Zogo’s favorite things about living in Howe is the strong sense of community.
“As I am currently living in Howe now, I have come to really love the community,” she said. “I love how supportive we all are of one another, even through this busy season of senior and junior fall and all the stress of academic and social aspects of our lives, we still come together to hang out in the common room or just to be together as a larger Howe community.”
“I would just say the community is really warm and authentic,” Ms. Chipman said. “[Everyone] knows really well how to take good care of each other with a degree of lightness when they are doing really serious stuff. One student in Howe has a poll of the day on every floor and everyone votes in it. There is boundless creativity and energy in these girls.”
Ms. Chipman testified to the vibrant and diverse group of students in the dorm.
“I love the goofy energy, I think that it’s really important that dorms feel like home,” Ms. Chipman continued. “We have some girls in here who are really serious athletes, artists, and students. I see them joking in the hallway. I often hear cackles of laughter from my apartment, and it’s really fun.”