I was a grad student at Harvard... let me correct a few things. First, Wilfred Schmid would probably never be called Willy. It's a funny idea though. Like calling the Queen of England Lizzy. He wasn't the dean... he might have been the dept chair at the time. As for living/sleeping at the office -- it's not a "terrible taboo and social stigma in America". (I'm American). But it's not allowed due to problems with hygiene (no showers in most bathrooms), smell, clutter, disruption at odd hours, etc.. So it's not allowed in any workplace. When it happens, the response of most departments is sympathy and an effort to find the cause and find the person a place to live. And grad students at Harvard are financially supported well enough to afford a decent room in the area. I mean... I wasn't rich, but lived comfortably in apartments shared with a few other grad students.
I was a grad student at Harvard in the math department too. In my time there was a student who decided he was going to sleep in his office (I don't think sleeping outside is such a great option in the New England winter). These offices are small - there's a desk, then room for a chair, and shelves for books above the desk. They are essentially for solo work. Anyway, this student was handling it fine - showering in the university gym and doing laundry in the basement of the nearby graduate residence halls, and rolling his bed up in the morning so as not to be reported by the cleaning staff. Then his girlfriend visited from abroad and she was so appalled with the suggestion that they bed down together essentially under his desk, that he ended up having to pay for them to stay for a week in a decent hotel. After that he found himself an apartment-share pretty quick.
> As for living/sleeping at the office -- it's not a "terrible taboo and social stigma in America". (I'm American). But it's not allowed due to problems with hygiene (no showers in most bathrooms), smell, clutter, disruption at odd hours, etc.. So it's not allowed in any workplace.
And as a Russian, my impression is somewhat similar to the original - in order to avoid all the problems that you mentioned it was made into that "terrible taboo". I mean many (if not pretty much any) taboo had pretty reasonable rationale at the time and place of its creation.
