Interview Excerpt, Charles Huenemann, Ph.D.

Dr. Charles Huenemann is a Professor of Philosophy at Utah State University who was assigned to an office in the Barn when he arrived at USU in 1994. He recalls the following:

"It was really great to be in the Barn because we had a sense of camaraderie, and we were off on the edge of campus in a certain sense in a marginalized building, and people would say, “Where’s your office?” “Oh, the barn.” It was kind of a funny place to have an office, and we were away from Old Main and the heart of our department with all the hustle and bustle so we kind of felt like we were out in the boonies, and I think that kind of drew us closer together….

"The fact that we were all in this old building together gave us this sense of being a club in a way, and as new people came into the Barn, they would join the club, as people left the Barn, we would designate them as honorary Barnies, which is what we called each other, Barnies.

"A guy next to me had a pet snake in his office, but every so often he would let the snake out to just kind of climb around…. What was funny, the snake’s name was Smith, and you’d be walking down the hall and suddenly there would be this four or five foot long King snake. It looked kind of vicious…it didn’t look vicious but it was noticeable. You’d be standing in the hall and it would kind of slither up to you and you’d jump out of your skin for a minute. But this guy was very good at taking care of his snake.

"One day I was at home got a call from this colleague, and he said that Smith had gotten out of his office, and he thought it had gotten into my office. So he asked if I could come up and unlock my office so he could get Smith back out. I showed up and sure enough, Smith was in my office and had pooped [laughs] some mouse remains out on the carpet. My colleague was very good about cleaning it up. It was surprising because you’d just be talking and look down and see a snake; it’s just instinctive to just jump.

"I had the chance to move to another condemned building [in 1999], the computer science building, where the library is now, and it was a bigger office, although it would be a stretch to say that it was a nicer office. It was still ugly, but it was kind of bigger, and I thought, 'Well I’ll go ahead,' and it was actually kind of a question of loyalty in a way because I felt that I was abandoning the Barnies. Then I knew, of course, that we would stay in contact because we were all in the same department. But it was this question of conscience in a way like, 'Should I leave the Barnies, am I ditching them?' They, of course, rubbed it in and said, you know, 'Oh, turning your back on us are you; you think you’re too good to be in the Barn anymore?'

"The Barn had an esprit de corps. I think all the old Barnies have a special allegiance."