Things change rapidly. Two weeks ago, they knocked on each other's doors; now they don't even do that.

"We walk into each other's rooms," Ellie says. "We don't knock. We know each other's schedules."

The girls don't go downstairs nearly as much. Apparently the gender stereotypes are true--there's nothing as nice as the couch in the boys' room.

The girls' common room in Weld 42 is colorful and fully decorated. Besides the couch, the girls have a comfortable white chair. Chili and cactus lights are strung across the ceiling. Pillows, posters and fabrics are scattered all around; on one wall is an enormous Dirty Dancing poster with everything but the title in French. Opposite the poster are pictures of male stars plastered on closet doors--the "wall of beauty," they call it.

Down a floor, room 32 is still plain. At press time, they had only a couple of posters, but the nine-by-five-foot Persian tapestry that Lee H. Teslik '04 ordered over E-Bay had just arrived and been hung on the wall. The boys might get a futon soon, Teslik speculates.

Sitting on the floor--except for a big blue bean-bag, there's nowhere else to sit in their common room--Lee is working on another decoration for the bare walls. He and his roommates have acquired one of the large yellow and blue signs advertising Head of the Charles that are hung on street light poles around Cambridge--though they prefer not to say how.

Picking out loose threads from the sign, Lee reflects on his room's new friends. Just as their common room isn't in its final state, neither are their social connections.