A REQUIEM FOR PENTAGON
A REQUIEM FOR PENTAGON
Innsendt av Henrik Høegh
Illustratør: Viktor Talgø Syvertsen
Translator: Eva Weston Szemes
Pentagon 1 is due to be torn down, if not in 2025 then not long after that. To many, this might look like a mercy kill, a necessity to feed an ever-growing university. But to many people, this place is packed with as many memories as there are silverfish. Built in the 70s, the three buildings; Arken, Børsen and Casino are legends in the history of the College of Agriculture.
One can only wonder about all the different techniques of ploughing (literally and figuratively) that have been taught in these tight spaces and all the friends won on the claustrophobic balcony. Maybe the thought that it’s a bit sad that this will all fall to dust doesn’t stay in peoples’ minds because nobody lives here for that long.
When newer, better alternatives popped up, people lived here for increasingly shorter periods and now, we live in an Ås-bubble where many never get to feel the brutal anxiety of taking a shower in a Pentagon gas chamber. Alas, international students, henkatter (they-cats) and me are probably the only ones who have lived here long enough to really call this a home. As a person who has had the honour of living here for three years now, it is a constant march of new people in and new people out, some for a semester and some for a year. The rooms and the windows are big, and that’s about all the positive sides. No dishwasher, only one small restroom and a general feeling of a secondary school’s gymnasium are some of the less positive sides.
Nevertheless, it’s a place where a lot of people have taken their first steps into independence, away from parents and the life they once lived.
I sincerely hope I am not the only one who will get a strange feeling when I visit NMBU ten years from now, with brand new blocks of flats where Pentagon 1 once stood. I wonder how much time will pass before the students no longer know what was here before, how long it will take before everyone is used to the luxury of Palisaden and the brutality of the past will be a lesson they will never learn. Time passes whether we like it or not, but we owe the past some reminiscence and consideration before it is thrown out. Be a friend, feel the rough shapes of Pentagon 1 and remember the good times you had there before it is too late.
