My experience in being served a national security letter and its accompanying perpetual gag taught me that our liberties are guaranteed not by the Constitution, but by our willingness to insist that our Constitutional liberties be honored.
—George Christian, "Libraries may be our society’s best bet in resisting government intrusions into privacy."
For the Future MIT Prefrosh from a Current Prefrosh: Ranking MIT Dorms
MIT has the coolest dorms I have ever seen or heard or dreamed of. Each one is so different and unique, and there is so much flexibility. Everything is student run and organized, and I don't know how I will ever be able to rank these dorms. They're just so wonderful.
It's overwhelming. There's a dorm called East Campus that's on East Campus, as in the eastern side of MIT's campus, but Senior House is also on East Campus, and where the hell does Random Hall fit in? Bexley? I LOVE BEXLEY.
It's crazy, but go and visit each dorm at CPW. There are many stereotypes that you'll hear from friends during CPW, but ignore them and get a feel for what each dorm is like. The students at each dorm are super nice, and they only have great things to say about where they live (exception: Bexley).
Then there’s East Campus. East Campus is INSANE. Well, the dorms are. East Campus is where all the academic buildings are and the infinite corridor and lobby 7. You can take the tunnels anywhere and everywhere, and climb the walls and run around like lunatics. The dorms are the insane part. These include primarily Senior House (Haus?) and east campus (with west and east parallels). There are murals everywhere – on the walls, on the ceilings, on the floors. Random is kind of a part of east campus, but they’re really far away. From everything. They’re really cool people, but they seem isolated.
I don’t know where Bexley belongs. They didn’t seem too exciting :)
I prefer east campus. The people there are incredibly fun and rebellious, and extremely brilliant. I found absolutely brilliant people everywhere – it is MIT after all – and I feel so... not brilliant. But then you walk into a room where there’s a ton of undergrads in a net on a ceiling and you understand that CPW isn’t really a lie – MIT can be so much fun, even if it is hell. And everyone understands the point at which you should stop the fun and just focus on work... everyone understands work vs. play.
So here it is... Ranking dorms... well the ones I’m familiar with. We have a post in the MIT Class of 2016 that's more detailed, but here are my stories.
1. East Campus: Build, paint, explore. East Campus is home. You can tell who belongs here when you get to MIT, and I'm definitely one of those ECs. People here dye their hair, build roller coasters, and paint beautiful murals. They cook in their halls, and people have had vegetarian co-ops with buying food. Some of the halls are more exotic than others, but only one is truly "clothing-optional" (4W, I believe). Don't worry, they don't show you that floor during tours, especially if a parent is around :)
2. Senior House: Senior House (Haus?) scares people. They are very sarcastic, but freaking awesome. They don't care if you're homosexual, bisexual, whalesexual, normalsexual, or practice abstinence. They are really chill and awesome and there's a tree in the backyard with a tire-swing that tried to kill me. I have scrapes and bruises that kill me but bring back awesome memories. I really like the group of people, and their mentality of "sporting death," or that the only thing that will kill you is death so live life to its fullest.
3. Burton-Connor: BC is known as the "East of the West." It is the most chill, or hipster, of the otherwise very mainstream West Campus. The rooms are sweet, as are the people. Every person I have met from BC has wholeheartedly promoted it, and told everyone else that they need to live there. They're all just so happy.
4. Simmons: Simmons is BEAUTIFUL! I hate that it's so far away :/ but the community there is so wonderful! They love rubber ducks (so do I!) and they seem like really nice people. Jake and I walked to Simmons once to take a tour and we get there and join a tour but then we saw a bunch of people with pool noodle foam swords and we're like hey that's so cool! And they said that we could join their game! It was so much fun! And then there was an ice cream party! So that's Simmons in a nutshell: go for the tour, stay for the sword fight.
5. Bexley: Bexley is awesome in a terrible way. They do "anti-rush," which means that they act like they hate prefrosh and frosh. I heard that this is all a show, though. They all really are cool people. Here's my Bexley story - we were all walking back to my host's dorm so I could drop off some stuff, and we passed Bexley. The Bexley people were using their mac to send out obscene messages over these really loud speakers, like sex noises and stuff. So I randomly shouted "PREFROSH LOVE YOU BEXLEY!!!" and Bexley responded, "Shut up, slut." I was sad, but kind of really happy at the same time as we all started laughing. We (Jake, Billy and I) decided to ask for an unofficial tour after I dropped off my stuff. We walked past the naked dummies and frightening signs in the Bexley courtyard, and entered Bexley. A girl in a sports bra at the front desk asked us what we want, and we said we wanted a tour. She said fine and got someone else to take the desk. It was all very... calm. Then she opened this little door under the staircase that was covered with profane language, and she went downstairs. We followed her into this open basement. Her and a guy went around the kitchen and opened every refrigerator and cabinet, saying "huh, no food" "I guess we have no food?" "Where’d the food go?" "Didn’t we just get food?" and then they stopped. She walked to the other side of the room, pointed to a corner and said "and this is a hangout area. And I guess that's it." There was a moment of silence. I said, "Is that... it?" And she said "do you want to smoke pot?" And me "um... no" and then she turned and walked back upstairs. We followed and went through the front doors, where some guy tried spraying us with a water gun from the front desk. Immediately after the door closed, we all burst out in laughter. Bexley is just so great!
6. Random: Random was so far away, but the people there are so much fun! The stairs are slanted which kind of throws everyone off, but the people are so nice and they may keep to themselves, but they have a really nice community over there. We went to Random for liquid nitrogen ice cream and they had the best recipe!
7. Baker: My Baker story is funny. So Baker is known as the most popular dorm on campus. A lot of people apply to live there, and they have the famous Baker Piano drop and a really nice dining hall. It just seems too Harvard (preppy) in my opinion. Jake and I went for a tour, and the first place they took us was the dining hall to meet with the guy in charge of it. We started laughing and just left, it wasn't our environment.
8. Maseeh: Maseeh (pronounced "Mass-eee," as in "Maseeh is classy") was really cool. I stayed there with my host, and it's a really sweet place, but it just doesn't have much of a personality yet. I fell like it might be a really nice place to live in a few years, but right now it's very quiet and calm, and I'm more of a crazy person.
9. MacGregor: I didn't get to go see MacGregor too much, just for food, but I heard it's pretty nice. I also heard it's really for a lot of sports kids and that they all get up super early. That is definitely not for me.
10. Next House and New House: I didn't really get to see Next House or New House. I think that they are too far from the academic buildings for me. Simmons is far too, but it's nice enough that it all evens out. Next House and New House aren't sick enough to overcome the distance.
11. McCormick: I am not a single-sex living kind of person. Some girls like that they can just do whatever there and are with people who understand them, but that whole girly spirit thing bothers me. It was also really quiet. It seemed like a great place to just sit and study though.
There you have it! CPW in a nutshell by dorms. Well a really long nutshell. I wish I had something like this before I went though, it's cool to hear all the different stereotypes and the rumors going around. More prefrosh posts to come soon!
