I'll admit it. I love those teddybears. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they're all over the place. In the bookstacks. On the tables and chairs. Next to the comic book collection.
Just a friendly warning. If you stop in the Qube for a peek before you type in your housing form, make sure to keep your eyes peeled for those flying fuzzies. --Jonathan Samuel
Winthrop House
I thought I had developed an unprecedented maturity by the end of my first year here. I'd outgrown the petty trappings of adolescence and now yearned to partake of the finer pleasures of adulthood. So when the housing lottery rolled around in March, I knew exactly what my dream house would be. I wanted to be able to feel the tradition of the Ivy League at my Dream House. I wanted fireplaces, oak paneling, a dining hall decorated with gold trained paintings of stodgy old men - and most importantly, I wanted ivy growing everywhere, crawling out of the bricks, sprouting from every crevice in my room.
But I was condemned to Winthrop House--the "high school" house, the house where Madonna blasts at every party, the house where gossip runs rampant from one dining hall table to the next.
It wasn't exactly what I had in mind.
But, being an excruciatingly mature first-year. I thought I'd give it a chance. I'd attend the famed Thropstock weekend. I'd deign to assume a 90210-esque mood.
So my three roommates and I trekked to Winthrop and headed to the main courtyard (the one with the tire swing). A couple of residents begged their pardon and jostled for good seats on the patio.
The residents rolled large rubber trash cans center stage onto a plastic tarp. Then they tipped them over, releasing huge waves of green and red Jell-O.
Suddenly, everyone leapt into the gooey puddle of gelatin.
And then they proceeded to wrestle. Not one-on-one, or even tag-team. Instead, about thirty Winthropians at once swam into the mess, drenching each other in the quintessential food of childhood.
I sat transfixed as I watched this annual ritual, and in an instant, I knew Winthrop was the Dream House for me.
No, we don't gossip all the time, and Madonna's as out of fashion here as it is everywhere else.
But here we know how to let our hair down and be funny every once in a while, to revel in a glistening pool of purple Jell O. --Melissa Lee