A guided tour of Mansfield Hall near the UW-Madison campus

A resident of Mansfield Hall, a private dorm for college students that offers support and community for diverse learners, provides a tour of the building located on fraternity row near UW-Madison.

By Murv Seymour | Here & Now

May 26, 2026 • South Central Region

A resident provides a tour of Mansfield Hall, a dorm and community for diverse learners.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Ashley Balber:
Hi, I'm Ashley. I'm from Chicago — the city of Chicago — and this is Mansfield Hall. This is our, like, craft area right here. So, anytime you want, you can just go in here, and this is one of the ones that we do. It's called Diamond Dotz. And then the board always tells us what's going on so we don't have, like, confusion. And then if there's any events happening, they'll be posted right here.

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This is the library area, where there we do a thing called SST. So that usually happens in here.

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This is where we, like, all sit and eat or just hang out. And there's a TV there, so if there's sporting events, we can request them to put it on the TV. We also play Mario Kart a lot on the TV, which is really fun.

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So right down here we have a little gym, which is really nice. There's like a treadmill and just a few different fun things. There's some yoga mats. Usually on Sunday, we do some yoga, which is nice. And then here, we have the basement area. They're renovating the bathroom right now, but Legos are always out, ping-pong — this table's here. The boys are always playing video games right here and being crazy.

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This floor is all bedrooms, and, of course, this one is mine. So, come on in. My favorite color is pink, purple and blue, but most of the decorations are pink. And that's my Chill Pill pillow, which I love. This is a photo of my dog. Her name's Roxy. She's really cute. And this is some — so, I'm a big fan of Taylor Swift, and for my high school graduation present, I went to the Eras Tour concert. So this is photos from that. And then I also went to Greece and Italy with a summer program, and that was really fun. And then my bed. I love my bed. It's very comfortable. And my nightstand. And then I have a lot of LED signs and fun things because when it's dark, I like to light it up. And then I have my bathroom. I'm lucky I have a private bathroom. Not all people do, but I do. And as you can see, I have some very fun mats.

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And then we're back to the first floor. And as you can see, the door is right there, and we're back where we started.