20 years ago we railed at Silber’s paternalism, and harangued Jon Westling. We flocked to Bay State Rd. or fled off campus if we did not want to live in one of the high rise dorms. They always quite frankly resembled nice low security prisons. Nicer than the Army, anyway. They were never,of course, adult, more like living at home where you shared a room with your brother and not really the place you wanted to bring your girlfriend. Bay State was better, but the walls could be paper thin (say no more) since they are really former grand houses with lots of partition walls the architects never intended. There were only so many singles. Moving off campus was the only way to really feel grown-up, but of course we were not grown-up no matter how much we thought so. We got taken by landlords, lived in only slightly better than slum accomodations, and of course had very little furniture. We loved it. A long way from home, but Mom and Dad had had decades to make the places we came from look and work the way they do. Dealing with institutional housing a la university dorms, starting out in life with our own places as impoverished students, and gradually building real houses and homes with our own families is a long long process. The couple of years camped out in a university dorm will seem in retrospect, like a funny episode at the very very begining of a long adult life.
Paul Shapiro, UNI ’82
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