
Dear President Reif, Don’t Fuck Up the Culture - cgtyoder
https://medium.com/@brandontle/dear-president-reif-don-t-fuck-up-the-culture-part-i-7dbfbaaf1ade
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ScottBurson
Outside security services working the dorm desks? Sounds like MIT -- probably
like a lot of other places -- is headed toward _in loco parentis helicopteri_.

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MichaelCrawford
I attended Caltech and UCSC. A couple years ago I went back for a visit. I was
appalled to see the entire campus totally deserted on a late Friday afternoon.

What's more, every single exterior door on the entire campus had a card-key
lock, with no doorbells. I was hoping to visit the Robinson building, where I
once was a research assistant for astronomer Jeremy Mould, but I could not get
in.

When I visited Ricketts House I figured there would have to be doorbells, as
otherwise the students could not find out when visitors had arrived, but no. I
hung around waiting until a student passed through.

"Old Scurve?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"What class?"

"Ex '86."

I was later accosted by three Institute security guards, dressed all in black
with combat boots, like Police SWAT teams. They did not believe that I was a
Caltech alum. I kept trying to tell them I was "An old Scurve". They did not
know what a "Scurve" was.

For a Caltech security guard to not know what a Scurve was is like it would be
for a UC Berkeley security guard to not know what a Hippy was.

Lately the Institute is repeatedly hitting me up to donate money.

I'll be happy too - when they remove the cardkey locks on the Student Houses.

~~~
ScottBurson
Okay, but for the rest of us, what's a Scurve?

~~~
MichaelCrawford
Sorry - a member, or resident of Ricketts House.

Scurvy and Ricketts are both nutritional diseases. However Ricketts House was
named for Louis D. Ricketts, who donates the money to build it back in the
1920s or so.

Ricketts - Scurve - Drunkard Blacker - Mole Fleming - Flem - Athlete Dabney -
Darbs - Stoner Page - Page Boys - Athlete Lloyd - Lloydies Ruddock - Rudd -
Gentleman

The first four are the old houses, all built during the 1920s, the last three
are the new houses, built just to the north in the 1960s.

I understand that the book "Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test" tells the tale of how
the LSD supply for the entire west coast of the united states turned out to be
coming from one single room in Lloyd House.

