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Located on South Campus near downtown Evanston, Willard (a.k.a. “Wooshack”) is a residential college known for its eclectic mix of residents. Willard is also known for Fran’s Cafe, a late-night diner in the dorm’s basement. It boasts some of the largest rooms on campus and hosts several social events each year, including Polka Party where residents dress up in their craziest clothes, dine at The Berghoff and dance to polka music. Willard was also once home to Stephen Colbert and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
“You’ll find a good community at Willard. We have one big social event each quarter, and it’s pretty heavily run by students. Also I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have a Willard room until I saw other rooms. I’m very grateful for my walk-in closet. The only thing that’s kind of a bummer is that it’s far from Tech.”
Yoko Kohmoto, Weinberg freshman
“There are always fun, quirky events going on that you can easily go to and meet more people – or you can just easily just stay out and not feel any extra pressure. The walls are thin, but the building is charming itself.”
Bradley Smith, Weinberg freshman
“Willard is probably the only place where you can meet people as weird as you and really bond over that weirdness.”
Michael Martinez, McCormick sophomore
“Everybody can find friends in Willard. It's such a big residential college that you'll always be able to meet really cool people, hang out with them, and do cool stuff like eat free food. For example, we have Fran’s – the dining hall turns into Fran’s Café. It's really good and greasy and perfect for late night studying.”
Abigail Mathier, Weinberg freshman
“I feel like some people really meshed with a lot of the groups here. There were very eccentric people.”
Brandon Fujii, Weinberg freshman
“Willard really is just a mix of a bunch of different kinds of people, and it's not like living at Slivka or something, which is fine. I don't want to drag them, but I'm just saying, everyone's an engineer. I feel like I've met so many different kinds of people interested in different things at Willard.”
Kathleen Young, Weinberg freshman
“What Willard lacks in community it makes up for in boss ass rooms. On a scale of 1-5 in terms of social life, I'd give Willard a two, but I heard its roof is a prime smoking spot so brownie points for that. Like...pot brownie points.”
Louisa Wyatt, Medill freshman
“Warm and mahogany.”
Jay Yu, Weinberg freshman
“I’ve met a lot of great people who live in Willard—a lot of my friends live there. The best part though would have to be Fran’s. It’s absolutely delicious!”
Sara Zdunek, Weinberg freshman
Reporting by Cameron Averill, Kamya Bijawat, Candace Butera, Camille Casmier, Madeline Coe, Sasha Costello, Mollie Leavitt, Hyunjee Lee, Samantha Max, Madison Rossi, Allison Sun, Stacy Tsai, Carrie Twersky, Anna Waters, Wei Wei and Jayden Zvonar
Photos by Gabe Bergado, Mallory Busch, Bethany DeLong, Timothyna Duncan, Olga Gonzalez-Latapi, Forrest Hanson, Sam Hart, Anne Li, Priscilla Liu, Susie Neilson, Michelle Reisin, Madhuri Sathish, Zach Silva, Jenny Starrs, Megan Suckut, Hillary Thomas, Bethany Tuten and Lucy Wang
Videos by Natalie Escobar, Alex Furuya, Abby Igoe, Hyunjee Lee, Nesa Mangal, Samantha Max, Rose McBride, Jacob Meschke, Malloy Moseley, Jon Palmer, Jackie Tang, Sarah Turbin, Nicola Traynor, Mira Wang and Mia Zanzucchi
Editing by Julia Clark-Riddell, Tanner Howard, Jeremy Layton, Samuel Niiro, Preetisha Sen, Carter Sherman and Zack Woznak
Design and development by Alex Duner, Tyler Fisher, Hilary Fung, Dan Hill, KK Rebecca Lai, Sheng Wu and Katie Zhu
This project is open source. Check it out on GitHub.
Data provided by Northwestern University Residential Services
