Everyone’s seen the typical college dorm: a poster or two from the Kogan Plaza fair, newly constructed white bookshelves and not a whole lot else.

But while living in the District, some students have spiced up their decor in a Capitol-esque fashion. From terrifying presidential statues to obscure newspapers, Hatchet staffers have done their dorms up in true only-at-GW fashion.

A miniature effigy of Washington himself

Rachel Moon | Senior News Editor

While the refurbished campus store sells everything trending from the ubiquitous Stanley cup to Revolutionary-branded crop tops, the GW-themed merchandising of the 1950s takes a far more interesting — albeit terrifying — twist on school pride. 

It’s common for GW students to collect various tributes to our school’s namesake, like a plush hippo here or a George Washington bobble head there. But my room presents something different: visitors often fixate on a perch of the TV stand, where “Creepy George” lives.

My best friend bought Creepy George off Etsy for $38 while wine drunk and gifted him to me for my 21st birthday because he couldn’t think of anyone else to off-load the terrifying talisman onto. Creepy George is a hand-carved wooden version of the George mascot from the 1950s. Creepy George stands roughly six inches tall, with arms akimbo in a bent position and chest puffed. He sports 18th century garb with a white powdered wig and blue boots painted onto his polished carved surface. Half of his uncanny allure comes from his wide, blank eyes staring you down and the other from his lopsided smile that more resembles a bulldog baring its teeth.

With “GWU” proudly etched into the top of his wooden tricorn hat, he is truly something you can find at a #OnlyatGW dorm.

A newsprint tribute to one glorious month

Nick Perkins | Culture Editor

For William Henry Harrison, March of 1841 was the best month ever. That was the only time that Old Tippecanoe, as he was nicknamed after his victory in the Battle of Tippecanoe, served as president, before he died from enteric fever.

That moment is now captured and immortalized on my wall, where a newspaper clipping covering his inauguration hangs next to one from a month later: “President John Tyler Inaugurated. Harrison Funeral Services.”

For admittedly opaque reasons, our country’s ninth chief executive has had a much longer lasting impact on my life than he did on America. While I acknowledge it’s really random to have a man crush on William Henry Harrison, I remember finding it extremely funny when my history professor mom told me there was a guy who had just been president for a month. Plus, his campaign song “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too” is a banger.

When I was 16, I drove hours out of my way to see his burial site in Indiana and a tiny, unair-conditioned museum dedicated to the president, containing everything from his boyhood crib to a framed invite to his inaugural ball from a month before his death. My mom’s house is decorated with Harrison bobbleheads, Harrison baseballs and more than one Harrison T-shirt. He even got me into GW — I wrote my college admissions essay about how my love of Harrison helped me hone my interest for journalism and political history. 

My presidential obsession extends beyond Harrison, and when hunting for decor for my new apartment, I stumbled across a special edition of the New York Times with the front pages of every presidential inauguration for just $10. The page about Harrison, which hangs above my yet-to-be-built desk, is really terrible decor, lacking any photos and with text too small to be legible. But I can’t really object to getting Old Tippecanoe’s influence in my home once again.

A license plate with bicoastal insults

Caitlin Kitson | Contributing Culture Editor

Growing up in New York City, I was lucky enough to live in a walkable community with a mass transit system at my fingertips. But as much as I cherish public transportation, my childhood in the Big Apple left me without a crucial marker of adulthood: a driver’s license.

While I despise car-centric infrastructure, jealousy still creeps in when my GW friends discuss the independence driving afforded them in high school. Luckily for me, I found that buying a kitschy, vintage license plate helped fill the car-sized void in my heart.

I found this particular souvenir for just $8 in an antique store in San Juan Capistrano, California while I was on a spring break trip with my three closest GW pals during our sophomore year. In a whimsical script, the plate displays some cutting words for New Yorkers and Angelenos: “Too Dumb for New York City, Too Ugly for L.A.” 

My Californian friend and I felt a connection to this absurd license plate immediately, declaring it a testament to our bicoastal bond. Today, the plate sits prominently on the bookshelf in my room — reminding me of our Southern California expedition and the fact that I should really learn how to drive.

The contraption that brings the world’s past to life

Jackson Lanzer | Staff Writer

Sitting on my bookshelf is an odd contraption that looks like a blend between Iron Man’s helmet and a pair of binoculars a child might wear. I found the device — called a telebinocular — in an Indiana thrift store this summer, when the old-timey, hidden-treasure look of the machine, which was popular in the early 1900s, caught my eye.

I had no idea what it was until an elderly antiquarian walked over and pointed to a weathered box of photos. She placed one on the far end of the device, and I held the goggles to my face, transforming the 2D photograph of a man staring at a lake into a 3D landscape. The telebinocular, which is now more commonly known as a stereoscope, works by viewing two identical images simultaneously, morphing them into a 3D image. 

I was lucky enough to stumble upon a collection of photographs produced by the Keystone View Company in the 1920s. The box of stereographic images includes shots of life from around the globe — from a hiker atop Mount Fuji in Japan standing above the clouds and gazing at Lake Yamanaka to Hawaiian boys surfing the waves of Waikiki — that the clunky, old goggles bring to life.

It’s this wonky, historic vibe that made me choose this device as decor for my D.C. apartment, because what is D.C. but a city filled with the wonky and historic aspects of life? Our campus lies in a city of marble and monuments filled with poli-sci nerds just waiting to tell you a fun fact about William Henry Harrison.