Senior house - mostly harmless

At Senior House, it isn't an insult to be called "weird" - it's a compliment! There are 150 different kinds of students living here. Residents are comfortable in their skins. We are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, or poly. We dance to all kinds of music (mostly loud). We come from all over the world. We take people the way we find them. Tolerance is the one virtue we value even more than individuality.

We love the sight of a hundred bouncy balls hitting the courtyard at once! We can think out of the left-sides of our brains. Many of the students are artists, musicians, or humanists. If tire-swinging gets those juices flowing, who are we to argue? Walking down the hallway can be an adventure - that keeps us all more alert and alive.

Senior House students take democracy in their own hands. We live next door to Chuck Vest, so we get used to telling the Powers That Be what we think. Our language may be blunt and salty, but we stand up for what we believe in. Senior House students think for themselves and make their own decisions. We minimize the number of rules and work things out within our own community.

You can come home again. Our annual Steer Roast, a house-wide party centered around the overnight roasting of a steer in our courtyard, is one of the largest alumni events at MIT. Many former residents come back every year. We've got lots of tradition - we're the oldest dorm on campus. Open 24 hours a day - unlike the rest of Boston. We hope you'll come here for the community, not just in search of a bed. You can't really tell what this (or any other) dorm is like from just reading. We hope you'll come by and get to know us.

- Cynthia and Henry Jenkins