Lower Common Room

The Lower Common Room

The Lower Common Room or 'LCR' as it is known is directly below the Upper Common Room at the top-end of the Newchurch Building extension to BRGS, besides the main door and toilets, as well as both stairwells leading up to the Canteen and Upper Common Room.

Segregation amongst students at BRGS is not a new concept; the 'UCR' has always been the location of students who share interests in fashion as well as dance & pop music. Whilst the 'LCR' has always been the location of students who, on the whole, like to head bang to heavy metal.

The CD Player

The LCR has, as far as we can tell, always had a CD player located somewhere within the room. This is often surrounded by a single sect of Upper Sixth friends for an entire year until they leave the Sixth Form, and the Lower Sixth assumes control.

The CD player at a busy time is more often than not blaring out bands such as Rammstein, System of a Down, Trivium and Metallica at deafening volumes. During free periods when less people are in the room, the genre as a general unwritten rule changes to what pleases the majority best whilst they study.

Currently, an aerial of wire has been soldered into the back of the CD player by Wez and Chris, and leading up the notice board at the back of the room ends being coiled around a piece of wood wrapped in cling film.

Community Spirit

Though the music is not always reflective of the personalities about the room, there is a general held consensus amongst users of the LCR that there is a much friendlier atmosphere than in the UCR. It isn't uncommon to see individuals moving around the Lower Common Room at regular intervals to talk amongst various groups of friends.

The LCR is a place where it's inhabitants can shout and move about freely as much as they like without someone turning around and getting argumentative for no valid reason.

Mrs. Boswell's Office

Overseeing the Lower Common Room from time to time is Mrs Boswell, a Psychology teacher and chief examiner for the PYB6 coursework module.

Due to the amount of classes she teaches, it's a rare occasion that she is in her office, and consequently the LCR inhabitants are more often that not, able to get away with murder.

The LCR UVI Poster Wall

The Lower Sixth of 2005-2006, now the Upper Sixth of 2006-2007, came up with the idea at the end of the academic year to pull down the useless posters that were years out of date and instead pin-up self-portraits of themselves and decorate them with their own sayings, or items of personal interest.

The wall is almost full now, and once again due to the engineering skills of Chris, a locker door has made it's way onto the poster wall, forming the doorway to Narnia.

The Back Wall

The back wall, currently where the CD player is, is home to pictures of the 2001 fashion show; 2006-2007's Upper Sixth have plans to remove these and instead pin up pictures of things they like, or photographs of days out.

Below the out-dated posters, at the moment are a few student time-tables and a large wall-chart of free periods which inhabitants of the Lower Common Room can add their name to, in any period where they have a free. The purpose of this, of course, was so that people within the Lower Common Room could easily see who has a free as well as them. Due to the popularity of the wall chart, a bigger one will possibly be required as students have had to start writing their names vertically between spaces in order to fit it in a box.

Stereotyping

Unfortunately it does exist in both Common Rooms and generally speaking, people from the individual rooms don't get along very well due to differences in personality and life-style.

Generalisations that have been made about the Lower Common Room are frequent and very similar to comments from other students, roughly forming the belief that the Lower Common Room is full of moshers, devil worshippers and nasty people.

Of course if folk were to spend more time in the Lower Common Room, or get more involved within the room instead of crowding around the pool table, they would indeed see that the above generalisation is purely that, and is not, by a long stretch, the reality.