The real fun at MIT begins once the sun goes down, and this is true for Burton-Conner as well.  Whether it is a two o’clock study break to get the sugar and caffeine that are needed to finish the pset for tomorrow or a prolonged game of poker or bridge, whatever excuse a student has to stay up late is likely a good one.  Other nightly escapades include hacking around campus, playing with flaming tennis balls, or participating in hacks on the dome.  The Mamma Maxima Scientiae hack on MIT’s dome was almost exclusively a Burton One endeavor. 

            a. Mamma Maxima Scientiae

In 1979, an idea that had become a project finally became a reality.  After a student commented on the similarities between the Great Dome at MIT and a woman’s breast, the Burton One Outdoor Breast Society (B.O.O.B.S.) was founded with the goal of hacking the large dome and placing a nipple on top of it.  After nine months and multiple iterations, the group finally got onto the dome and set up the nipple.  They celebrated with champagne and steak at Phil Kesten’s, class of 1978, place in Boston.  The full-length story of this famous hack has been written about by Phil Kesten and can be found online.

            b. Miscellaneous Shenanigans

A good deal of life at Burton-Conner is difficult to label and categorize.  These “miscellaneous shenanigans” are a large part of life at the dormitory.  Residents have been doing things for a long time that “seemed like a good idea, at the time.”  In retrospect they may not have been the best ideas, but they left us with great stories to pass on.  In 1978, some alumni from Conner 3 “borrowed” a street sign from one of the Boston Freeways.  Today, a little over 30 years later Conner Three’s floor lounge is home to a number of street signs that have found their way to the dorm.   In 1986 MIT was celebrating its 125th anniversary.  Part of the celebration was a party where a giant Styrofoam “125” was put up.  This ended up in the Burton 2 floor lounge and stayed there for a couple of years.  

Burton One residents in the late seventies decided that jumping from Burton One into the snowdrifts that accumulated outside of the dorm during the Great Blizzard of 1979 was a safe fun way to get in a study break.  What started off as a minor commotion, turned into jumping from Burton One into the snow below naked.  Joan Solomon, one of the first females on Burton One, recalled being a spectator while noting that, “Actually it was more fun to watch the guys get back into the dorm only to realize that they now had to run naked up the stairs and through the halls to get back to their suites!  Of course, given the cold, there wasn’t much to see.”

The river along Memorial Drive used to be a nice place for gentlemen to take their dates and make out.  Living right next to the river and being engineers that were too busy working on physics and trajectories to be one of those couples down there; they would frequently launch water balloons into the cars and such.  They were aware of a successful hit solely because of shocked yells and tires pealing out.  I recall “some friends” throwing snowballs at the frat brothers as they rushed to class.  Of course they had the decency to throw them from a different floor so that our floor never got blamed. 

            c. Friendly Pranks

An inevitable outcome of living with a group of college students is a handful of friendly pranks done to relieve the stress.  The pranks can be either simple or elaborate, but are usually done in good clean fun and never meant to harm anyone.  For example, I remember one student my year switching the locks on two of the other students doors, and they had to use the other person’s key to get inside their own rooms.  While, Matt Abernathy, class of 2006, single-handedly switched two of his classmates’ rooms entirely including all of the furniture inside and the clothes before filling up the rooms chest high with crumbled newspaper. 

In 1968 MIT built the Julie Fassett Memorial Garden in front of Baker House.  Julie Fassett was the wife of former MIT associate Dean of Residence Frederick Fassett.  One Friday afternoon as a couple of Burton 5 residents returned from campus they passed near the future site of the garden and borrowed a couple pieces of the construction equipment and shrubbery.  After a couple of hours Michael Laird, class of 1969, and his friends had cleared out one of their friends room, rolled out the sod, put up a couple bushes around the room and a park bench.  They even took off the door to the room so that the floor had a nice park for the weekend.  On that Sunday they returned everything back to the construction site.  The photo shows the “park” and you can notice the grass in the room.