The Gopher Hole is coming back. For real. After being closed for nearly 10 years – including 3 years of unkept promises that it would reopen – the Gopher Hole is set to celebrate its grand reopening at the start of the spring semester. Before closing during the 2017-2018 renovation of Mary Fisher, the Gopher Hole was a student run cafe, bar, and music space, but after being closed for so long – and with no plans for food or drink service – it’s unclear how the space will fit into campus culture. Even current seniors (class of ‘26) arrived at Goucher more than half a decade after the space closed, and many students don’t even know that it exists.
Above: The current interior of the Gopher Hole. Image Source: Zev Israel
Nestled underneath Mary Fisher Dining Hall, with one entrance in the historic lobby and another by the Student Market, the Gopher Hole is very literally underground. Between the low ceiling, dim lighting, and bar-like layout, the Gopher Hole is a big departure from the atmosphere of most spaces on campus. Compared to most of the campus, it looks more at home in a dive bar than any current campus spaces. For SGA Attorney General Elowyn Ingler ‘28, this is one of the main draws of the space, “I walked through [the space] and was like ‘wow, I get why people have been talking about [reopening] it and wanting it to happen.”
The reopening isn’t coming out of the blue though. The project comes as the next step of SGA’s initiative to add more third spaces on campus. This is the same initiative that brought SGA’s proposal to keep the Athenaeum open 24/7, which was recently implemented. The Gopher Hole proposal has been spearheaded by Ingler, and President Christian Houck ‘25. In November, they brought their plan for the Gopher Hole to Senior VP for Operations Brian Hutzley. Their main goal is to open the Gopher Hole up for club events, as well as hoping to see it become a space for student musicians to perform.
Above: Attorney General Elowyn Ingler ‘28 (Left) and President Christian Houck ‘25 (Right) Image Source: Goucher SGA
After their meeting with Hutzley, I spoke with AG Ingler about how the meeting went, and what the reopening process will look like. “He was really receptive to [the proposal],” Ingler said, adding that they seemed “on track to open [the Gopher Hole] in the first week of the Spring semester.” This plan was later officially announced at the SGA general assembly on December 3rd. Although the Gopher Hole previously had issues with water leaking in from outside, the space seems to now be in a much better state, “there’s no major issues with the space right now, it’s just neglected and messy,” Ingler added. After completing a walkthrough of the space to assess the work that will need to be done, Ingler and other SGA members plan to volunteer their own time to clean and decorate the space in preparation for its reopening.
Once the Gopher Hole reopens, it will be available for clubs to reserve for events 7 days a week, just like similar spaces such as the Heubeck Multipurpose Room and Fireside Kitchen. In addition, SGA will be maintaining open hours – currently slated for Fridays and Saturdays – where SGA members will keep it open as another third space for students. For the events that will be coming to the Gopher Hole, music is a large focus for Ingler, hoping to hold open-mic nights and attract other student performances, but she’s excited to see how else students will make use of it as well, saying: “my hope just that it can become whatever kind of space students are looking for.”
The prospect of the Gopher Hole coming back is an exciting one, and the work that SGA has put in is commendable, but it remains puzzling how the process took so long to even begin. Even though all of the repairs to the Gopher Hole were completed in Summer 2023, Ingler says “it’s just been kind of sitting there because it’s unclear whose space it is or who’s going to do something with it.” In recent years, situations like this seem to be all too common at Goucher. Our campus is packed with talented, motivated students, world-class faculty, and a myriad of resources to support academic and extracurricular projects. At the same time, many of those resources are remarkably poorly advertised – and as a result go underused – and student engagement this year seems to have reached a new low.
This disconnect between students, their peers, and the resources available to them could be explained in many ways. I personally might look to blame YikYak. As one of the few online public forums for students, YikYak’s anonymity could be seen to drive us to talk about each other more than we actually talk with each other. Others however might point to faculty turnover and staffing shortages. Some of the most important offices on campus – like CREI and OSE – are maintained by only 1 or 2 staff-members (shoutout to Catia, Erica, and Denzel) and some academic departments have just 2 full-time faculty. Even larger departments can suffer from frequent turnover in part-time or adjunct faculty.
In comparison to the Gopher Hole, these problems are gargantuan, far beyond the scope of what SGA can do, and still a huge challenge for the college’s administration. The symptoms of these problems are much easier to target though: a lack of campus community, and poor communication. These are things that can only be helped by bringing people together, and as luck would have it the Gopher Hole is poised to bring students, faculty, and staff from across campus together, all excited to see Goucher’s newest student-led third space. The unique role that the Gopher Hole is set to fill has the potential to reinvigorate campus culture like nothing else.
Above: The Gopher Hole in its heyday. Image Source: Goucher College
With that in mind, I implore you, anyone at all reading this: come to the Gopher Hole next semester, see the low ceilings and dim lighting, hear the music, and maybe even make a new friend. Wouldn’t it be nice to make a new friend? It doesn’t matter what your connection to Goucher is, the Gopher Hole will not survive without continued community efforts to keep it alive. It’s a minor miracle that it will even reopen in the first place. As a senior, I won’t be here to see the Gopher Hole return to its former glory, but I intend to be there to help give it a push. I hope you’ll be there as well, whether you’re organizing an event or just dropping by to see what’s going on. It’ll take a lot of work from a lot of people to get this ball rolling, but once it takes off, it’ll be a thing of beauty.
By Zev Israel ‘26
Featured Image Source: Zev Israel
