The thurnes

In the language of the normaliens, the thurnes — or turnes — denotes the dormitory rooms made available to the students of the École normale supérieure. This term is also used by students of other French grandes écoles and is thus no longer the exclusive preserve of the École normale supérieure.

The thurnes of the École normale supérieure, whether single or double, are spacious and modern and essentially distributed on three campuses: Ulm, Jourdan and Montrouge. They give students the opportunity to live in the vicinity of their study place and take an active part in campus life.

Regularly, some thurnages — the room allocation process — help allocate the rooms as fairly as possible. These thurnages are hence supervised by the Délégation générale des élèves (students’ general delegation).

Then, should we write turne or thurne (the second term being a pseudo-Hellenistic variant of the first one)? Both spellings exist indeed. Apparently, both spellings can be freely used in leap years, while the spelling thurne is only to be admitted in the writings of the normaliens in non-leap years.