By Chloe Wray
wraychlo@grinnell.edu

Many Pub Quiz-goers may know Anna Schierenbeck, Clare Nash and Hannah Boggess, all ’18, as members of “The Femmepire Strikes Back.” They infamously hold a two-year reigning champion title.

They will be back running Pub Quiz the first Wednesday after fall break in Bob’s. In the meantime, they can be found residing at 1205 Broad Street, their home for the year.

The three were lucky to secure the second floor of 1205, a rare three-bedroom apartment.

“Our entire third year we were like ‘yeah we signed a lease, but we have no idea what it looks like.’ We knew there were three bedrooms and the necessities, but that was it,” Boggess said. They signed the lease having barely seen the house’s front staircase, let alone the actual interior.

While this is their first year as roommates, “we more or less have lived together,” Schierenbeck said.

“We’ve spent the vast majority of our time together for the past three years,” Boggess added.

Nash and Shierenbeck met prior to their first year through a mutual friend.

“We thought that would be the end of our friendship because it was so intensely awkward, but lo and behold,” she laughed. Boggess and Schierenbeck met in their Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies class first semester their first year, and by second semester, the three became five as they bonded with Lucia Tonachel and Madeleine Goldman, also ’18.

The trio thinks that the name “Tri-Delt” best suits their home, pointing to the fact that there are three of them. The name also speaks to a fascination with both sororities and the hand carved wooden Tri-Delt sign that used to live outside 1008 High Street, which Anna once attempted to steal before returning it to its rightful owner, who graduated without passing it down. The group plans to adorn their staircase with both a Tri-Delt sign and a “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” sign.

Other ideas for the house name included “Barbie Scream House” and “Butter House.”

“It’s funny we were between something about female empowerment, something about butter,” Nash said.

“It’s disgusting how much butter we go through in this house,” Schierenbeck said, elaborating that they buy a pound a week for eggs, toast and buttered crackers.

In conversation, the trio bounces off one another, an element of comfort that is apparent in their home as well.

The three agreed that their favorite communal room is the bathroom. If one is showering, it’s not unlikely that the other two are hanging out in the bathroom. The shelves are lined with makeup, face wash and serums “and then the entire under the sink is like 150 tampons” Schierenbeck shared.

“Somebody came in here and was like ‘this is the most aggressively femme space I’ve ever been in,’ and we were like, ‘yeah, that’s the point,’” Boggess said.

If not in the bathroom, it is not uncommon to find all three in one bed, drinking coffee or chai, alternating sweet and salty snacks and watching “Friday Night Lights.” According to Boggess, “We just lay in somebody’s bed all the time, constantly touching.”

The house is not without the quirks characteristic to many a college apartment.

“The architecture of this house makes literally zero sense,” exclaimed Nash as she described the oddities of her room. For example, the carpet, “is not even like carpet material, I think it’s just like fabric that they glued down to the ground,” Nash theorized.

“Also like all of the walls and floors are warped, especially in my room the walls are almost wobbly. It’s like the fake wood paneling coming off of the wall,” Boggess explained, adding that it can be agreed that the their “den,” a room furnished solely with a table and rather bare bookshelves, is “the strangest room and we kind of don’t talk about it.”

Besides the “aggressively femme” bathroom, there are other hints of being “really team ladies,” quipped Boggess. These include Schierenbeck’s custom glitter banner, which reads “Dump Him,” and their “house-blend of glitter,” which is used for ritualistic dousing before going out.

“Now we buy clothes with the intent of them being communal,” Boggess said. “We also almost exclusively call each other babe, honey, bitch. Only terms of endearment, all the time. Bitch is included in that list.”

“A theme of this house is that we really enable each other to do to anything and everything,” Nash said fondly.

“We love each other. We’re really happy here,” Schierenbeck added.