To step into the Mather elevator and casually hit the "18" button, Wong says, turns heads.

"We're a celebrity with the people that know we live on the 18th floor," says another lucky lottery-winner, Scott H. Landry '92. "It's one of the best rooms on campus."

The Top of Mather is another room that you

No one knows exactly how old the kegerator is... ...but it has a Mondale-Ferraro bumper sticker on it. dream about, that you aspire to. "Actually, it was one of the rooms we saw first when we were freshmen and we were looking," Wong says. At the time, he says, they never thought they'd get it.

Destiny.

***

Sure, fate played a role in the Quincy House rooming lottery last spring. It never hurts to get the third lottery number. It never hurts when lottery numbers one and two allow you to get the room "because they know we would throw a lot of parties and create a lot of fun for Quincy House," which is the way it happened for Gerald S. Rideout '92.

But Rideout and his roommates hadn't left it completely up to fate. They had done all they could to get The Room in Quincy House--the room with the patio, the room everybody knows about.

It was about a month into his sophomore year, Rideout says, before he knew he wanted to live in the room with the patio.

The next step was to get a bigger rooming group--which means a higher lottery number. Somehow, he was able to pull together 13 people. It paid off.

There's a price to be paid for the luck and design it takes to win Quincy's most coveted room. You have to face the high expectations of your fellow housemates.

"Every single one of us has getten approached several times about when we're going to break in the room for Quincy House," Jamie F. Rice '92 says.

And there's upkeep--the patio itself is in the process of renovation, and the common room furniture is always a consideration. "We're keeping it down to the basics, so we can just roll it into another room," Rice says.

And there's an obligation--a commitment that you implicitly make. "There is some type of responsibility when you get the room," Rice explains. "Since there aren't enough patios to go around, a lot of people think they'll get the chance to share them with you."

Sharing a room with one of the biggest houses on campus. It means work. It means money.

But if it's your destiny, it's hardly any trouble at all