To the editors:

The recent piece “On Lottery Eve, Rituals Reign” (News, March 25) was devoted largely to Quad-bashing. The Quad certainly has its flaws: first-years assigned here can look forward to Fly-By five days a week and the joys of memorizing the shuttle schedule, not to mention the long distance from their oh-so-nubile River (and Yard!) colleagues.

But I say to those poor souls assigned to Cabot, Currier and Pfoho, look on the bright side: at least you didn’t end up in Dunster.

Getting Dunstered, as Matthew R. Lynch ’07 astutely observed, is the very definition of losing the housing lottery. Dunster is nearly as far from civilization as Mather and the Quad, but without the perks (namely pleasant living quarters and whining rights). The inside of the house is reminiscent of a seedy roach motel, and through the barred windows one can only see Mather’s pockmarked carapace.

Of course, to be fair, I should note that there hasn’t been an outbreak of gastroenteritis in the Dunster dining hall for nearly three years. But that can perhaps be attributed more to the hardy Dunsterites’ immune systems finally acclimating to the harsh intestinal bugs in the Central American water (I’ve heard the syndrome referred to as “Cabotzuma’s Revenge”) than to any hygiene improvement on the part of the Dunster women and men.

JASON LURIE ’05

March 25, 2004

The writer lives in Cabot House.