Inside Voice is a new column by Cameron Jones, highlighting the eccentric decor choices of Yalies and the even more eccentric personalities behind them.
When I walk into my suite in Benjamin Franklin College, the overhead light is tragic. It manages to be dim while still drawing attention to every scuff on the wall and speck of dust on the floor. This is no way to come home after a long day.
“When you walk into a room, it’s all about the first light you turn on,” James Ruskell, BF ’26, tells me, “My mom told me that—make sure you put that in there.” Stepping into 916 Mansfield on a dark night, I know exactly what the place is about: the record playing through the stereo; the assemblages of second-hand prints, magazine covers, and Soviet movie posters along the walls; my friends in a new setting, smiling as I take the first step through the front door.
Call it a wave, call it a bunch of particles, boil it down however you may, but light has preferences, attitudes, and moods beyond its atomic components. It knows when it’s being honored, feels when it’s in good company. Mansfield is a temple of light with many altars.
The centerpiece of the living room is a grand lamp with a pair of gilded cherubs twirling around its base. As the body of the lamp blooms upwards, it flares out to form a bowl. Its center rod continues, from which sprouts two stacked umbrella shades. Translucent faux crystals dangle from the first. The second shade, silk and haughty, sits like a hat in a royal wedding. A little switch at the top of the umbrella turns on a light behind the crystals. Ruskell claims he bought it from a “traveling merchant.”
In a quiet corner, a rustic side lamp has found its home. The attached table is etched with the curlicues of cartoon flowers. Succulents sat on the table bathe in the warmth of two incandescent bulbs. Their tendrils stretch toward the twin suns.
In a bedroom, lamps tower, perched like noble birds of prey. Their ceramic bodies are a deep blue speckled with gold. Inlaid, beneath a clear lacquer: cross-stitched lilacs. The shade, navy velvet on the outside and gold paper on the inside, is perfectly cylindrical. These lamps don’t cast light across the room but direct their glow straight back onto themselves. They think they are the only thing worth seeing.
“I love the transition to the lamps when the sun is setting,” says Angela Chen, BF ’26. As the shadows lengthen across the floor and the glitter of the sun fades behind distant houses, the lamps come on. Lines soften. The walls blush. The furniture relaxes. As a warm fuzz washes over the whole apartment, Mansfield comes to know itself.
