In fact, I hear that our house-master was in attendance at the last one. I wonder what he has to say about it (with a few spelling corrections):
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 1994 23:40:55 -0500 (EST) From: ORMEJOHNSON@wccf.mit.edu Subject: the molotov cocktail incident To: smleite@MIT.EDU Cc: bexley@MIT.EDU Organization: Mass. Inst. Tech. - Whitaker College X-Vms-To: IN%"smleite@MIT.EDU" X-Vms-Cc: IN%"bexley@mit.edu" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT About 4 days before graduation one year, a senior physics major living in bexley was visited by a group of east campus residents, who teased him about the quietness of bexley, there having been no recent hacks against the hm or the 'tute from bexley. the guys from east told our man that the then new hm really had things under control. our senior decided to prove the dudes from east wrong, and took a beer bottle and a length of rubber hose out to the street, and proceeded to siphon the bottle full of gasoline. a rag stuffed into the neck of the bottle of gasoline completed the bomb. the guys took this to the roof, which was up to this time freely accessible to residents, though if caught you'd be chased off, if the catcher was the night watchman or a cop. Many bexley parties at that time concluded routinely by adjourning to the roof, and shouting until the cops came and ran you off, amid general merriment. Well, our guys located the point just above the hm's bedroom, lit the molotov cocktail (ie, set fire to the rag extending from their neck of the bottle), and carefully dropped it to explode just beneath the hm's open bedroom window. It did, making a circle of burning gasoline in the alley, about 6 feet in diameter. The flames rose up several feet- very impressive. I was awakened by the shouts of a passerby in the alley, whom the guys on the roof had not noticed. The man in the alley was a graduate student who had seen active duty in Vietnam, understood what he had seen, and was extremely angry at having survived attempts by Viet cong to off him, and then nearly buying it from some random assholes (as he put it) at mit. He told me, through the window, what he had seen and gave a fast description of those he'd seen hanging over the parapet enjoying the fire. I had an idea who it could be, and ran up the backstairs to emerge through the kitchen into the hall outside 405, where, guess what, I could smell the strong and unmistakable smell of raw gasoline. There were no open windows within 20 feet. I just sniffed carefully, located the door, and proceeded to kick it off its hinges. It burst open, revealing the 2 bexleyites, the perpetrator and his roommate, who as a crippled person had taken no active part in the event (he couldn't easily get up the ladder to the roof), as well as the 2 guys from east campus. I was extremely pissed off, thinking about the fact that this imbecile had thrown a fire-bomb into the alley next to my childrens bedroom, but I did no physical harm to the fool (a severe test of my pacifist principles, since I am larger, stronger, and at that moment much madder) but instead said "Well X, your ass is grass". He replied "gee it was only a little fire-bomb". He could not be properly tried before graduation (the cops came a few seconds later etc etc) so the trial was scheduled a week later, and meanwhile, the jerk went through graduation, but was handed an empty diploma folder by Paul Grey, who told X ( I was about 8 feet away) well, I'll see you in my office Monday am. At the trial, held in front of three deans, X was convicted and sentenced to have his diploma withheld until he had done three months community service, which he did as a tutor of some minority kids in Roxbury. By all accounts he did a good job. Also, we decided not to hand him over to the criminal justice system ( the Cambridge cops and fire marshal were very curious about this attempted arson case, as they saw it.) Since no one was hurt and no property damage happened, mit viewed this as an internal matter. The jerk got his diploma at the end of summer, and then went off to grad school. You can argue the appropriateness of any and all of these actions, but remember, you weren't there. The outcome of real interest is that from that day to this, the roof at bexley has had the dubious distinction of being with the green bldg the only place where you will get a whopping fine just for setting foot on the roof. Enough time has elapsed now, that maybe we can make a case for building a deck so that it is safe (from the point of view of the roof's integrity) to walk around up there. It's very nice up there in mild weather, especially at night. I hope that we can make this happen, cheers, Bill aka whoj@mit.edu.