Bard Slang

Know the slang, know the school! The following is a list of things you might want to know before coming to Bard College.

  • The bizarrely armadillo-looking performance center.

  • The community vegetable garden.

  • The campus’s pristine estate, replete with Hudson River view and romantic arcadia.

  • Tivoli’s main street, but most often used to refer to the popular pizzeria.

  • Center for Curatorial Studies (Bard’s graduate school).

  • Ovular parking loop in front of Manor House.

  • A cluster of quiet dorms near the campus’s northern tip.

  • Learning & Thinking, the early August pre-program for freshmen.

  • Biannual late-night breakfast/party in Kline.

  • Where you go to lift, swim, and sweat it out.

  • Peer Counselor

  • The closest thing Bard’s got to a traditional collegiate lawn, situated between the campus center and the Toasters.

  • The woodsy canyon that circumscribes half of Bard’s campus.

  • Residence Director

  • A huge, angular rotating metal sculpture upon which supine students can watch the nighttime stars shift.

  • A series of sweet on-campus dorms available only to upperclassmen.

  • Unaffectionate sobriquet for the most dreaded dorm on campus (a.k.a. Tewksbury commons).

  • A unique brand of dorms that resemble a certain kitchen appliance.

  • The acrid, mysterious catacomb hidden beneath Bard Chapel.

  • A dilapidated watchtower built across the bow of a Blithewood maple.

  • The grassy polygon near Bard’s main entrance.

  • The kinkiest club to hit Bard, well ever.

  • Notorious off-campus bar the Black Swan.

  • Bard library’s ultra-quiet fourth floor.

  • Another cluster, this one closer to the center of campus.

  • Obvious, but not exactly easy to find. Bard’s mystical waterfall sits hidden atop a hill somewhere deep inside the campus’s southern wilderness.

  • Bard’s photo facility located (you guessed it) in the Annandale woods.