Bexley Cocktail Parties

I hear that Bexley has great cocktail parties too. Although I have yet to attend one. I hear the stuff they serve is pretty strong, it'll take the enamel right off your teeth and make you breathe fire.

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
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X-Vms-Cc: IN%"bexley@mit.edu"
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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.

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