In the House they call him "Butt-fucker" because he does all the dirty work. He's the guy they turn to when a hot water pipe bursts in the gameroom at 2 a.m. or when the Toast-R-Oven short-circuits the entire first floor. When they had a Hawaiian party and didn't know what to do with all the sand, he figured out a way to truck it down the block to a tiny tributary of the Charles. To this day, Butt-fucker's Beach lies invitingly under the overpass, at the intersection of Beacon Street and Charles Gate West.

Last Saturday was Butt-fucker's birthday. Everyone was chasing him around the House. "C'mon Butt-fucker," they screeched, "time for your BIRTHday present..." Eventually he tired, and they caught him, appropriately down near the boiler room. With well-practiced teamwork, five of them grabbed him like a cord of firewood and hustled him out into the middle of Beacon Street, where he received two rounds of boisterous "Happy Birthday" and 21 solid whacks from an official House paddling board. Laughing, they filed back inside to shower down for another Saturday night formal dinner at an MIT fraternity.

"If Sigma Alpha Epsilon is the big jock and lady's man house, and Phi Sigma Kappa is for duds, then I guess our House is in between. We're middle of the road." Tex, a dedicated student of the MIT fraternity scene, hunches forward as he lectures on the meaning of Brotherhood in one of the House's cramped four-person bedrooms. "We do things together, so that we can get to know each other, know each other well." he explains. "Like we take canoe trips and go out to restaurants and goof around. You don't know what a blast it is to march into a public place, all 31 of us, and take the place over." Brothers perched on desks and leaning on bunk beds look at their feet and nod in agreement, grinning.

Like most inhabitants of MIT's own fraternity row--a line of stately brownstones directly across the river from the campus--members of the House consider themselves "nice, regular guys," doing their best to whip that next thermodynamics problem set and score Saturday night.

Although they have initiation rituals and secret passwords, and they hoist a skull-and-cross bones up their flag pole each day, the Brothers do not run an Animal House operation. No brassieres hang from the bannisters, no motorcycles are driven through the dining room. By 7 p.m. most weekday evenings a hush falls over the carpeted upstairs hallways and regal, mahogany-trimmed smoking rooms. No one is gatoring to "Louie Louie" under the 25-ft. dinner table or filling water balloons on the roof. If you plan to remain at MIT for any length of time as a student, frat brother or not, you must do some serious "tooling."

But if you do live in a fraternity, you are expected to absorb quite a different education in addition to the one you get at the Institute. "You learn to get along with other guys here, to work with them and have fun with them," says Smilin' John, the "Alpha"--Greek for Grand Illustrious Poobah. "Responsibility" is a word Smilin' John barks at his charges with the regularity of a firm coxswain. "It might be true that you lose some independence here, but we all come to agree that it's for a good cause," he says.

The Brothers do all of the house keeping: the clothes washing, floor mopping and window cleaning. Until 12 years ago, an ancient cook lived with the fraternity. But as one middle-aged alumnus mournfully reports, "We came back one day to say 'hello' to Chef, to give him a hug as we always did because we loved him so much, and discovered that he had died." Aside from his pot roast, the old man was always a favorite because "there was inevitably some form of socializing going on in the cook's quarters when he went out Saturday nights."

Today the Brothers cook for themselves--a chore to some, an art to others. Josh is the James Beard of the House. He even looks like him, only with hair. Josh knows he's good. He enters his spacious culinary atelier by 2 p.m. on the days he is creating, and he does not emerge with his weary assistants until well after his masterpieces have been consumed and eulogized. Maybe someday, Josh hopes, the Brothers will name a dish in his honor, as they do for all legendary House cooks.

"Tradition," says the Alph-in-chief, "really helps us keep things going. It gives us pride in ourselves and in the history of the House. We all feel like we're part of something larger, more reassuring."

There is no hazing within the House. Pledges (freshmen) do not have to foxtrot through libraries in evening dresses to prove their fraternal dedication. "We do give them a hard time sometimes, but everything we do has a purpose, and usually it's fun," Smilin' John insists. Take Scavenger Hunt, for instance--pledges are "kept amused" until 4:30 a.m. and then awakened an hour later to begin a city-wide search for museum guidebooks, match book covers from favorite strip joints and foreign language pornographic literature. "We've been doing it for a long time," says Dave, a veteran of two-and-a-half semesters at the House. "It's kind of good for them; they get to learn about Boston."

The happy hunters are, of course, the lucky ones. Many would-be Brothers never make it past Rush. "Yeah, Rush is big," says Brother Richie with a smile of absurd understatement.

Freshmen arrive in Cambridge on a Thursday in late August. They get Friday to look around unaccosted before the infamous Freshman Picnic that night.

Tex narrates:

"You've got all of these nervous freshmen. MIT hasn't told them jackshit about anything. They're all sitting there stuffing down hamburgers and all of us, we're sort of lurking on the sidelines, waiting. Sometimes we even send some people in, to infiltrate and scout around. Then a guy stands up--the adrenalin is really flowing now--and right at 6 p.m. he yells, 'Let Rush begin!'

"We all jump in there and literally grab people left and right and drag them back across the river. The the parties start, and a few days later we figure out who we want and who we don't want."