Every year, in the warm sunlight of September, the Student Union lounge is clean, freshly painted, and serene. Tables and couches are arranged in a way that will promote discourse and conversation. A few days before school starts, Jukay Hsu walks briskly in and out of his office, whistling with purpose. In a matter of months, the floors will be caked with something sticky, the couches that have remained intact will be full of M&Ms, dust, and in some cases, mice. The tables are being used as foot rests or card tables, and a few minutes after second period has started, as Mr. Teitel barges in, and croaks out an angry demand for program cards, a few sleepy-eyed seniors will either fumble for their wallets, or mumble something about not hearing the bell, and excuse themselves.

The transition is swift, terrible, and typical all at once. The Student Union lounge, like the Senior Bar, is inherited ground that each year's newly-minted Seniors defend fiercely as soon as they lay claim to it, and by the middle of September they have usually marked their territory extensively. The wild Seniors will frequently use music, recreational activities ranging from wrestling to card games, methods of dress, and general mayhem to make the Lounge their own, but in the end the lounge remains what it always has been: a refuge from the dangers both real and perceived of Senior year, and a last chance for chest-beating, self-expression, and high-posting before heading off to college, and the humiliation of becoming a freshman all over again.

Given its proximity to three work areas (The Spectator and ARISTA offices, and the Student Union itself), there has always been a certain degree of academic and political rub-off on the Lounge. During the Dr. Plass scandal and Micah Lasher's clashes with the administration in 1999, the lounge hummed with the same tension that crackled through the rest of the school. Throughout his term as SU President, Matt Kelly worked hard to involve students all over Stuyvesant in the politics of the real world, and he always started with people in the lounge. "I think at times [Kelly] pushed it [student activism] too far," commented Paul Reyfman. That rub-off, however, went both ways. Kelly in particular knew how to let his already shaggy hair down. Shantha Sussman, who graduated in 2000, fondly remembers how "there was a lot of jamming going on in the SU...Matt Kelly playing guitar..." Indeed, most of the lounge regulars were people who worked in the SU in some capacity already, and their friends. Others came for the aforementioned music: some came to play it, some came to listen to it. As Ted Graham recalls, "Some people went to hang out and play music, some people went because various positions kept them tied to the SU, some people went merely to get out of class...though I think that's one trait they all shared."

The cutting and fun 'n games aspects of the lounge are also undeniable. The lounge has long been a crucial site for participants in the game of Killer. The lounge has been a war room, a safe zone, and even a battle ground over the years, and Reyfman declared one of his favorite Stuy memories was a water fight he had in the lounge during the game. This year, the lounge took on yet another form when it became a kind of casino, populated by what Broken Escalator Editor Ryan Muir termed "pungent, uncouth degenerates," some of whom would spend entire school days playing games of Chinese Poker. Though one particular pungent, uncouth degenerate Michael Vogel recalls, "just learning the games and playing them," as one of his best Senior year experiences.