Culture
It fell to our House Committee to bring to pass a perfectly magical cultural event that I’m going to try to describe. Not in the hope that you’ll be able to reproduce it—I’m firmly convinced that that can never be—but because I count it among the miracles that have taught me about the love of God.*

It was 1960-61. MIT’s Centennial Year. Everybody was remembering a hundred proud years and laboring to make memories that would last another century. Aldous Huxley and e. e. cummings were lecturing and reading in our halls of assembly and broadcasting over our airwaves** and along the audio cables that complicated our ledge-walks.

We cherished a long and distinctive tradition of sponsoring only the dead minimum of parties and other conventional social gatherings, in firmly-intentional contrast to the policies of the fraternities and even of other dormitories. So, some consternation ensued when the powers that be passed along, via the Dormitory Council and therefore via my reluctant self to the East Campus House Committee, an urgent mandate to plan and bring to pass some sort of event of memorable cultural value. Also a $50 budget. More money then than now…

Given our traditions and predilections, how could we possibly cooperate to leave a coherent cultural mark on the Centennial? Our customary hacks, however subtle or sophisticated, didn’t really fit the description. Nor did hall-hockey, mega-water-fights, or any of the other ways in which we usually came together to do things. It’s not that we were without culture, but rather that our cultural preferences tended to vary widely and individualistically, to be more solitary than collaborative, and to partake of a sense of humor bordering on the sardonic.

We argued and agonized. More than one meeting bore no fruit. Until my good friend Charlie Weller (right behind me in the picture), Third Floor Hall Chairman (if I recall aright), brought one of his constituents to an ad hoc “let’s try one more time” House Committee gathering. This parishioner of Charlie’s stood out for oddness in this very individualistic assembly. I’m going to call him “Lance,” inasmuch as I don’t remember his real name. Not one whose company I ever sought out. Presumably brilliant, on some level, but then that went without saying at MIT, in those Sputnik-haunted days.

While Charlie shrugged and rolled his eyes and the rest of us sat by slack-jawed, Lance made us a thunderstrikingly strange proposal. He’d relieve us of the burden of our assigned event and promise us something cultural that we’d always remember, but in return we had to buy his plan sight unseen and do it exactly his way, with no further negotiations or modifications. The budget, said Lance, was plenty. We’d also have to give him the green light to arrange a partnership with our very opposite numbers at Senior House.
*You may well think me irredeemably silly on this score. Go ahead. I can’t help it. That’s still how it affects me, more than half a century later.
**WTBS-AM, 640 on your dial in Cambridge, the Radio Voice of MIT.” For a while, I deejayed a twice-weekly evening “classical” music program from the studio in the basement of Senior House. Until fellow radio guy Lew Norton told me I talked through my nose. Kinda lost interest, after that.
Back a Page
(House Committee)
Such a Life
Contents
Page
Indexes:
Chapter 2
(1946-58)
Chapter 3
(1958-72)
MIT
(1958-61)
Mission
(1961-64)
Next Page
(Shakespeare)
Welcome Stories Sections Such a Life People Places Site Search Do You Know?
Updated Aug 2014 [108.htm] Page 31-034