Mather House Opens 'Tranquility Room'

As students across campus crammed on the eve of exam period yesterday, Mather House inaugurated the opening of its new Tranquility Room for Meditation, Prayer and Reflection with cookies and tea.

Tutors, students and Masters took their shoes off to enjoy the fluffy cushions and plush carpet of the yellow-walled room, as New Age and soft Brazilian music played in the background. Wellness Teas with names like “Tummy Mint” and “Sleepy Time Extra” adorned the table outside.

The room, a former classroom located in the Mather low-rise, will be open to Mather residents for meditation, prayer and simply as a place to relax, according to Nava Ashraf, a resident tutor and the originator of the idea.

“I hope students come and leave everything behind and replenish themselves,” Ashraf said. “With the Masters supporting it, it says the spiritual part of ourselves is just as important as the intellectual.”

The room emphasizes both relaxation and spirituality. A bookshelf houses books on a number of religions as well as instructional books titled Learn to Sleep Well and Learn to Meditate.

“It’s a place where you can explore the meaning from all different world religions—and you can also learn to sleep well,” said Kira Peterson, the acting Mather House senior tutor who helped decorate the room.

Ashraf said she and another student who is currently on leave came up with the idea for the room last year when they realized there was no non-religious space for students to pray or meditate on campus.

Peterson said the tutors struggled with the question of how religion-oriented the room should be.

“We want it to be used for prayer, but we don’t want to exclude people who aren’t religious,” Peterson said. “Even to the extent we want it to be religious, we want it to be interfaith.”

But the dominant theme is relaxation. A peppermint and spearmint eye mask lies on the shelf and the sound of trickling water can be heard from a miniature artificial waterfall. A card on top of the book shelf reads, “Take time every day to sit still and listen.”

With this Tranquility Room, Mather House Master Leigh G. Hafrey ’73 said that now students will have a place to do just that.

“Sandra and I were here as undergraduates, so we do see that the Harvard undergraduate’s life is a pressured one,” Hafrey said. “We both hope it will give them a chance to wind down.”

Hafrey also said that he was supportive of the Tranquility Room as another step in making Mather “feel more human.”

“Over the years we’ve been looking for ways to make Mather feel more homey,” Hafrey said. “Mather from an architecturally standpoint is not always the most welcoming place to live.”

Ashraf said she hoped the Tranquility Room, with its bright walls, sky-blue ceiling and green plants, would be a peaceful refuge from the “sharp” feeling of Mather’s gray concrete.

“It’s just a very light, sunny room,” said Nancy Squires, another resident tutor involved in the project, as she lay on the plush off-white carpet. “On a day like today, you come into this room and you feel like it’s not winter in Cambridge.”

The tutors said the room took on even more importance after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“It took off after Sept. 11 because there wasn’t a place for people to go,” Peterson said.

Despite working more hours than Peterson said she would like to count, the tutors still had to rush to open it in time for exam period.

“It took us all semester,” said Amy E. Duwel, a resident tutor. “We painted the walls ourselves, we sewed the curtains ourselves.”

The room’s construction became a team effort, with tutors, tutors’ spouses, students and the Mather superintendent helping to hang curtains, paint walls and lay the carpet down.

Even though the concept of a meditation room might be foreign to some students, Ashraf said she hopes they grow to appreciate it.

One thing is certain: the room will not be wasted by the tutors.

“I decided to make a deal with myself that I will set a certain amount of work I want to get done and after I finish I will come here,” Squires said.

—Staff writer Anne K. Kofol can be reached at kofol@fas.harvard.edu.