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At MIT, Senior House is no more

Accepted submission by Runaway1956 at 2017-09-10 12:18:37
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This was Senior House, the oldest dormitory on campus, built in 1916 by the architect William Welles Bosworth. For 101 years it welcomed freshman and returning students. Since the ’60s it was a proudly anarchic community of creative misfits and self-described outcasts—the special kind of brilliant oddballs who couldn’t or didn’t want to fit in with the mainstream eggheads at MIT. Some did drugs and dropped out. Some did drugs and graduated. Others were proudly “straight edge,” eschewing drugs and regarding their bodies and minds as pristine temples. Many went on to create startups, join huge tech firms, and change the technological world as we know it.

Senior House was the gravitational center of alternative culture at MIT, characterized by extremes. For example, since 1963 its courtyard was the site for an annual Dionysian festival that began with a whole steer being hauled atop a pit and roasted on an open flame. The bacchanal ended three days later when there was no more mud left to wrestle in or drinks to gulp. By the time the third dawn came, friendships had been forged, tire swings had been swung, meat had been devoured, some drugs had probably been snorted or smoked, jobs had been offered, and lives had been changed.

https://www.wired.com/story/a-weird-mit-dorm-dies-and-a-crisis-blooms-at-colleges [wired.com]

WARNING: the story is a wall of text, and our less literate friends may want to avoid it

Additionally - similar dormitories around the nation are disappearing from other campuses. One might suspect that today's college students are being forced to become conformists, or GTFO.


Original Submission