The roommates have each adopted the lingo to different degrees. Nick, who loves linguistics, is academically interested in the dialect’s evolution. Kieran, an English concentrator, refuses to allow the slang into his speech. Aaron and Justin, in contrast, have seen the terms slip into their vocabulary.

It’s even contagious to regular room visitors. Anthony says he notices his girlfriend describing people as “such a kid.” He can imagine himself in three years, seeing something crazy and exclaiming, “That’s such a thing.”

This sort of language brings the roommates together, Sam says: “It really does make the group, in a way, its own nation-state with its own identity.”

Tearing Down the Walls

On a recent Saturday afternoon, the roommates sprawl across the four grey, red, white and yellow couches in the Quincy 305 common room.

The roommates relate their first impressions of each other and their voices crescendo. Insults fly, punctuated by laughter and clapping at the beginning of favorite stories.

Quincy 305 connects to an adjoining common room in 303 through white wooden doors. On the far side of 303, there’s a blue face painted on the wall. Anthony just started painting one day and his impromptu work took the form of a face.

Behind the bar, in the corner, hangs a Communist Party flag that Sam and Kieran bought on their trip to Russia the summer after sophomore year.

Each common room opens onto the balcony, which holds a grill and a few green and purple plastic chairs.

When the roommates chose these rooms last spring, a wall separated the two and they were connected only by the balcony.

With dreams of a massive, eight-person common room, the roommates began to lobby their House masters to tear the wall down and replace it with a door. Justin wrote a three-page proposal. Anthony was in town for the summer and spent time writing e-mails and scheduling meetings.

“We pretty much showed them how it would work in their budget,” Anthony remembers.

Quincy House Master Robert P. Kirshner ’70 agreed, and the wall was torn down over winter break.

“They did their homework,” Kirshner says. “They were relentless in a nice way. What’s amazing is that they were able to effect change.”

The roughly $2,000 job ended during spring break, when the hole in the wall became a set of white wooden doors.