Reflections

[memnus]

East is changing. I want to say growing, because it's mirroring the growth I'm going through, but that's not fair to those who'd rather it be how it once was.

Frosh year, I would have been very surprised if I'd walked into the lounge slightly after noon to discover a half-full bottle of brandy and several empty glasses sitting out on the table.  Today, though, it doesn't phase me, and not entirely because I was drinking that brandy last night.  It's not that East was a dry dorm, but a year or two ago none of the drinking was public.  If you drank, you drank with a few friends in someone's room, with the door closed.  Now, it's not nearly so covert.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  Part of me wants the East of yore, of Funball and G63. Those traditions aren't mine, though, and is it my place to want to hold back a natural change? Places, cultures, and groups are not static and unchanging. They're dynamic and fluid organisms, and I'mnot sure where my part in that process is.

If I know myself, my part is to sit back and watch.  It's where I'm most comfortable.

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Comments

[vkrafft.livejournal.com]

My frosh year, the drinking was mostly done by a certain group in upstairs backhall, and TimeSuck. I don't recall ever seeing bottles left out in the lounge, but there was at least one instance of drinking Star Trek, and the first party with alcohol served at it was my frosh year.

East changes a lot every year, as you lose at least 1/4 of the dorm to graduation and such. Even the people who stay behind change - my frosh year I certainly wouldn't have predicted that I would be living in a suite and throwing several parties with lots of alcohol.

*shrug* Everything changes, and life goes on . . .

[squirrelloid.livejournal.com]

You weren't there my junior year when i occasionally brought a glass of wine to dorm meetings (and Proctor John would kindly inform me that it was technically illegal to be drinking alcohol in a public place, eg, the lounge). Of course, i think i was the only one to do so. And no bottles were left in the lounge afterwards.

I really don't see why the dorm can't do both. Oh well. Maybe it will/has made East more socially acceptable to its neighbors? (Yeah right...).

Not long before i got there, East was a big drug-using dorm apparently. Shortly after that (and still before i got there), east was definitely pro- drinking/sex/etc... (the Patri Era), including times when you didn't wander into the lounge unless you wanted to risk intruding on an orgy. (They wouldnt care, in fact, they'd probably invite you to join them). This was also the age of naked hottubs.

My class had a profound effect on the character of the dorm. Some of us would continue to exert influence on dorm norms until we graduated, and certainly the class immediately after us was rather in-sync with our initial changes. By my senior year, many of those same people who had helped yet those original norms would have preferred something approaching the Patri-era ones, but there were new faces who had chosen those social norms and to live in East because of them. Change came slowly, mostly because other members of my class, and the class below us, were rather active members of the dorm. And change came from the frosh, because frosh have more freetime. Anyone who recalls the awkward 'two-dorms' feel was experiencing a dramatic transition of dorm norms and values.

So there you have it. Dorms can change rapidly in a 4-year span. And frosh normally contribute the most, because they have free time and will be there the longest. Its change by attrition mostly, as those who preferred the older norms either graduate or move to the colonies.

[squirrelloid.livejournal.com]

helped *set, not yet. Wheeee... brain.

[camlost.livejournal.com]

East certainly changed a lot while I was there. My senior year, when I was in South, I thought that South was a lot more like the East of my freshman year. At least the half or so of it that was social.

[willworker.livejournal.com]

IIRC, G63 was not exactly a dry suite. For that matter, neither was Funball, back when it was a first/second floor suite, rather than a third (or fourth) floor suite.

::G63 was almost BeforeIWasBorn::
Steve

[bobbzman.livejournal.com]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Pick any generation, and you find that everyone thinks that the dorm was perfect during their frosh year, and went downhill from there due to the lame-o's in the classes below them.

That said, it is hard to see the East you attached yourself to die. It'd be fun to step into some alternate reality in which descendents of Funball, G63, Chessers, etc. kept things going the way we left them, but that was our legacy, and the current reality is someone else's.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

I think East is falling apart, but I think everyone old thinks that.

How this year's frosh and next year's frosh do things will determine whether there is an East community as such when we graduate, I think.

There are other things. Drinking contingent in east used to be a hostile takeover, which is less the case now. I like that.