The administration’s negative perceptions seemed to coalesce around a particular symbol -- the “Sports Death Banner,” which students proudly hung from the side of the building. The graphic of a red and white skull came from the cover of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 and was part of what this group of students inherited from those who had lived there before them and had been passed along across multiple generations by this point. (The students celebrated Thompson for his fearlessness as a truth-teller who challenged authority and questioned orthodoxy and they admired his experimentation as a writer who broke the rules.) The deathly imagery spooked admins, who could not understand why students would want to associate themselves with such symbols. (We will ignore the fact that several Ivy League schools have highly prestigious Skull and Bones clubs.) In reality, the “sport death” motto might be loosely translated as Carpe Diem -- seize the day, live life to the fullest, take risks, move out of your comfort zone, etc. As the slogan says, "only life can kill you."

There was a time when risk-taking would have been associated with experimentation and innovation: indeed, many of the Senior House alums would go on to be innovators of all kinds as both academics and business leaders. And risk-taking is often valued within the start up company ethos where many of these students would work after they graduated. But, university culture is increasingly liability driven and so risks are to be avoided at all costs, and a flag that celebrated “risky” behavior (as the admins saw it) was too apt to come back and bite them in the butt should “something bad happen”. One of the many reasons I left MIT in the end was that the administration at the highest levels had become risk-adverse, no one wanted to fail at anything, and as a results, faculty and students alike were being encouraged to make "safe" choices. So, coming home to the Sports Death banner every day was a breath of fresh air.

Often hurt and frustrated by the negative stereotypes about them, the Senior House residents leaned into those perceptions comically rather than try to negate them. So, because of the perception that these were the “druggie” students, they had a sampler made, “Senior Haus is not a crack house; it’s a crack home.” They distributed t-shirts made for an imaginary Lamda Sigma Delta (LSD) fraternity, which they wore with pride; they gave each other “purity tests” and loved to brag about whoever had the lowest score (the most transgressions of cultural norms.) These various jokes were often read literally by the tone deaf, who could not imagine why anyone would joke about such serious matters.

Sometimes, even we would forget that the students were not nearly as “far out there” as the identities some projected onto them. When the administration was cracking down on some bondage related stuff at the dorm, I found myself engaged in a spirited, principled defense of the rights of sexual minorities trying to educate the campus police about the rise of S&M practices on college campuses. When I finished, the house president looked at me with honest shock and said, “we never do that. That would be gross.”

For them, the pleasure was playing with transgressive images and such images helped them to identify others who shared their tolerance for people of diverse tastes and interests. This is after all the classic function of subcultural signs -- they keep away those who would not understand the community’s core values and attract those who share them. In fandom, we call it “shocking the mundanes.” Sometimes, these shock tactics went too far and frightened some students temporarily assigned to the dorm, a matter we took very seriously.

But underneath those signs, there was a culture which placed a very strong value on tradition and which had built a solid alumni network. We were introducing this concept to a group of new residents once and someone wondered into the lobby who came from the MIT Class of 1942 and wanted to return to visit the dorm which had meant so much to him in his college years. The Steer Roast (about which more shortly) was said to be the largest MIT alumni event each year, and there were always several residents (and sometimes a former housemaster) there each year who had been coming back for Roast since the 1960s when it was first held. The police expressed concern about a van parked outside the dorm during Roast, since they saw a steady stream of students coming in and out all day. When we dropped by unannounced, we found some alum inside with big scapbooks, sharing “back in the day” stories with students who wanted to know more about the dorm’s history. Our alums functioned as mentors for the residents and sometimes as pipelines into jobs when they graduated. They also were strong advocates whenever the dorm hit a periodic cycle of active conflict with the administration, who had threatened to close the dorm several times before they finally did. Thousands of them signed petitions when the dorm was under threat this time and when Steer Roast was shut down last year, they organized the event off campus largely thanks to the alumni pooling resources to insure that this tradition would not be stopped.

Let me speak to the dorm’s reputation for drug use. We certainly encountered some signs of pot being smoked during our years of wandering the halls at odd hours; we certainly heard of some rumors of current students using harder substances and some larger-than-life tales about conspicuous consumption in years past, but rarely did we get any information one could act upon. My own sense is that drugs are used in every dorm on every American college campus and the use here was not higher than average. That’s not a comfort to those who imagine a drug-free culture, but it is the reality with which we had to work.

The largest and most intense drug-related problems we confronted were caused by prescription drugs, especially shifting doses and combinations of antidepressants. The good news is that such drugs enable some students to complete their educations who would never be able to do otherwise, but the bad news is that the ways they are used can produce unpredictable effects. The second largest number of incidents came from non-residents who came to the dorm to do things at parties they would not have done in their own homes. This is where the dorm’s bad reputation fed upon itself, with non-residents acting the way they imagined Senior house residents acting and oir dorm left cleaning up the mess. But, without being complacent, the number of drug-related incidents involving Senior House residents tended to be low -- especially when read against the sometimes hysterical accounts that circulated elsewhere on campus.

The dorm was across the street from the MIT Medical Center. Students were encouraged to seek help for anyone who seemed to be at risk. The dorm culture was more open than many so people knew who to look out for and were there to insure that they did not hurt themselves with self-destructive behavior. There were always a few students who wanted to push things beyond the community’s limits, a few each year that we knew needed close attention, and there were certain times of the year, either when students were away from home for the first time or stress level was particularly high, that we knew to keep a closer watch than usual.

There were some great campus police and members of night watch who embraced a value of community policing and saw the importance of building solid relations with the students, and we worked closely with them. One of the most beloved figures in the history of the dorm was Big Jimmy, a member of Night Watch, who got to know and often mentored the students on his watch, and after he passed, the students had a portrait of Big Jimmy painted which they could bring out for student events as a reminder of his legacy. But there was also a shift during our time there from community-based policing towards a urban or paramilitary police force mentality stressing the dangers of living on the MIT campus.

THE ROASTING OF STEERS

Senior House culture all came together around Steer Roast, a weekend long BBQ party held each spring shortly before the final study and exam periods. All segments of the dorm collaborated to produce this event which was deeply couched in tradition and rituals. First there was a gathering of the tribes, with students dressed in all kinds of attire, from cosplay to formal dress. One guy came every year wearing stilts, another girl dressed in a bikini made from duct tape, some looked straight out of a 1960s protest and others for some future alien society. Each of these outfits were personally meaningful and many of them were affectionately recognized from years past. Alumni from multiple decades showed up and in many cases brought back their children who they hoped would become the next generation of dorm residents. (One of our house presidents was the son of two former senior House residents and purposely chose to live in his father's old dorm room.)

At some point, breaking through the chatter of old friends comes a recording of the gravel voice of William Burroughs delivering his Thanksgiving address, followed by Wagner's “Flight of the Valkyries.” By this point all eyes are on the roof of the building, because the pit lighting ceremony has begun. As the music hit its crescendo, a toilet paper roll was lit and slid down a wire running from the roof of the building to the pit. As it hit the the lighter fluid saturated coals, there was a loud whoosh and flames leapt high. But immediately a brigade of students holding extinguishers dampened the fire, bringing it back under control again. I sometimes think of those students as reflecting the logics of self-governance within the dorm: a self-policing mechanism which understands the need for release but also the importance of keeping things within limits.