Common rooms

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 44680

I tend to agree with bboy_m as to the way that the isolation of the houses 
tends to divide them rather than to foster cooperation. Any such artificial 
divisions within the overall group will encourage an us/them mentality. But I 
am not sure that we are not gifting the location of the four houses' common 
rooms with more secrecy than actually exists. 

I suspect that by the middle of one's first year just about every student has 
the general idea of where the common rooms of the other houses are located. 
They may even know which painting or statue is the gatekeeper for the houses 
other than one's own. They don't know the passwords, of course, but they 
aren't supposed to.

I am also firmly of the opinion that each house's amenities are extremely 
similar with the chief difference between them being that each common room is 
on a different floor, and that the reason for this arrangement is in 
consideration of traffic control in the hallways at the times of day that 
large numbers of students from each house are all headed in one direction. It 
would also tend to confine the damage in the case of magical disaster in one 
of the towers.

Another thing about Hogwarts that I cannot ever see being tolerated in a US 
school is the apparant lack of adult supervision once inside the Houses. We 
almost never see McGonagall sticking her head into even the common room, let 
alone doing an inspection of the tower. All supervision appears to be in the 
hands of the Prefects. I doubt this is the case even in a UK boarding school 
in this day and age, but it is very much the impression one gets when reading 
memoirs of life in boarding schools around the turn of the 20th century and 
earlier. 

-JOdel