I lived in Stuart Hall during my freshman here. Stuart is up the hill from the rest of the campus although some of that space has since been filled in. I don’t know who started it or why but there was a tradition, at least on third floor south, that if it was your birthday you were supposed to be dragged from your room, carried down to the bathroom, placed in a shower and summarily drenched.
I think it was in March that it was Barry’s birthday. Barry was a character among characters on third floor south. We thought of ourselves as a kind of ad hoc fraternity complete with a naughty but Greek sounding name, I Phelta Thi. There was no way that Barry was going to escape the shower thing and he knew it. So when the guys went to pluck him from his room he quickly undressed so he wouldn’t get his clothes soaked. Fine. The guys carried naked Barry down the hall and past the bathroom. On they went to the elevator and down to the first floor. Then they went out the front door and carried him all the way down the hill. It wasn’t difficult because there were so many guys and we all took turns. As we got to Marycrest he was dumped where the south facing windows could see us. We sang a quick happy birthday and left as Campus Security came. Meanwhile some nice women threw Barry a few towels which he wore on his way back up the hill.
You might think that a person could avoid the shower thing by locking themselves in their room. If anyone tried it, pennies were shoved into their door jamb such that the person was effectively locked in to their room. I think there was one time where the janitor had to come out and take the door of its hinges.
Living in Stuart Hall was some kind of experience. One trick the guys did was put an inch of water on the floor over the entire hallway on third floor south and took turns running and sliding. One day one guy hit a dry patch and fell forward onto a door jamb. He suffered a minor concussion. Our RA (resident assistant – the floor counselor) who was always cool with anything we did changed his personality immediately. No more flooding the floor, no more lots of things.
On the North wing there was an RA whose name was Levator. It will come as no surprise that the North elevator had the “e” removed in his honor.
