"The students are very nice, how else can you put it," Lamons says. But the men who ride the bus are not quite as well-behaved, he says. "You get one or two that are bothersome when they get to drinking, but not the girls."

The 1 a.m. run from Wellesley is nearly empty. A silent group of Black fraternity pledges files--on line--into the back, along with MIT junior Richard B. Wang, who says he just visited his girlfriend of a year and-a-half.

Wang says he met his girlfriend at an MIT frat party. She was an aquaintance of one of his roommmates, who invited the both of them to the fraternity.

Wang says the interaction of Wellesley and MIT students is "all connections. If you don't know anyone who knows anyone, it's very different."

"I invite friends of my girlfriend to frat parties, and I introduce them to my friends who don't have girlfriends," he says.

But having a girlfriend at Wellesley can involve a lot of travel time. Wang says he only makes the trip once a weekend and once during the week.

When the bus pulls up to Johnston Gate at 1:35 a.m., a few drunk Harvard students run by. "Hey, that's the Wellesley bus!" one yells and laughs.

If he had spent the night on the Wellesley bus he wouldn't have found it funny.