In the late 1980s, senior housing consisted of Hamilton, Garman and "New Dorm." For three years after its completion in 1986, the College decided to keep mum on the name of its newly constructed maze.

Twelve years ago, The Student reported that the College was prepared to break its silence and dedicate what would come to be one of the most coveted senior dorms in honor of capital campaign donor Donald Smith Cohan '51. The College chose to delay the naming ceremonies until after Cohan's daughter, Susannah Cohan '89, graduated from Amherst.

While many students find navigating Cohan more confusing than getting around Merrill, the dorm's design won an award from the Boston Society of Architecture for its "simplicity, restraint, scale and use of materials."

Cohan residents Julia Rhodes '90 and Andrew Friedman '90 felt that the dorm's provisional moniker would survive the test of time, but, unlike Jenkins' and Taplin's 20-year old alphabetical nicknames, "New Dorm" may have been lost to the ages.