Week 1 Theme 4

Incorporate a name.

The Zoo is an odd place. You go to the zoo to feed your human fascination with animals. But you go to The Zoo to work. The Zoo resides on the third floor of a brick building on the corner of Prospect and Trumbull Street, home to Yale’s computer scientists.

This computer lab houses rows of extraordinary computers intended for use by extraordinary people. This place needs a concise, extraordinary name with extraordinary letters, and “Zoo” is perfect. Zoo. How often do you say that? Zoo. Maybe if you were a zoologist, you might hear that syllable more, and you might go to an actual zoo every few years. But for computer science students, the Zoo is a sort of gathering place that no other department is small enough or intentionally quirky enough to create. And for that, the Zoo is unapologetic. The Zoo is the misleading, loud, discordant call of its rare species.

The Zoo is home to campus’s most nocturnal. The place bustles at midnight, dwindles at 3am, and never completely clears because of the stubborn student with an equally stubborn problem set. Screens are laid out like portals into their animal cages. One says “python,” across from “frog,” not too far from “chameleon.” “Dolphin” has his own corner, peering into a world unseen by the rest of campus. Hardly anyone has a reason to go there, but for the few that do, this place is the Zoo.