College miscellany

[snopes]

Comment: I'd like to tell you about some variations on several college
urban legends I've encountered. I was a student at Ohio Wesleyan
University in the 1970's, and an older, returning student at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst in the '90's, and encountered
variations on several old campus urban legends. Most of the urban legends
are discussed at your site, but I believe that these versions of the
legends are not.
At UMass I used to hear one story which was no different from the
version described on your site, but which may have had a secondary meaning
particular to UMass. This is the story about buildings designed for riot
control. The main administration building at UMass looks like an
oversized concrete bunker, with small entrances, recessed into thick
concrete walls, and very few windows on the ground level. The story goes
that the building was constructed during the radical days of the late
'60's, and was designed with so few points of egress so that it could
easily be closed up and defended in the event of a riot. It occurs to me
that this story could have secondary symbolic meaning at UMass, a
notoriously user-unfriendly institution, always ranked at or near the top
of Princeton Review's rankings of worst colleges for red tape. It seems
possible, then, that, in addition to giving a look at campus life in the
'60's, this story at this particular college may also symbolize students'
views of the administration building as a place from which students are
routinely shut out by employees who view students more as an annoyance
than as the reason the school exists.
An urban legend I have not found at your site, but which I've heard
has shown up at a number of colleges in recent years, is one that claims
that the school where the rumor circulates was the model for Faber College
in Animal House. When I would hear the claim that UMass had inspired the
Faber campus (as I understand it, Dartmouth was really the inspiration for
AH), this was always accompanied with the same three pieces of evidence:
the citing of a particular building on the UMass campus which resembled a
building in AH (kind of a lame piece of evidence, because the UMass
building always mentioned was of very traditional college
architecture--Georgian-style red brick with white columns in front--a look
seen on most college campuses); the fact that the UMass fraternities, like
those in the movie, were a row of old wooden houses that appear to have
once been large, fine family homes; and the fact that the girls' school
the Delta boys visit on their road trip is called Dickinson College,
supposedly clear evidence of an association to the locale of UMass, as
Emily Dickinson lived her whole life in Amherst.
Another story I heard occasionally at UMass was a local variation on
the sinking library story. At UMass, the main library has 26 stories, and
is faced with brick. Legend has it that for a number of years after the
library opened back in the '70's, bricks kept breaking loose from the
building's walls and falling. There may be some truth to this part, as
indicated by a chain link fence all around the library, which keeps people
back maybe 30 feet or so from the building, and allows entrance only
through one narrow path which goes under a heavy roof. Where the
similarity to the sinking library story comes in is that UMass legend has
it that the cause of the falling bricks is the failure to calculate the
weight of the books in the library's design, causing the bricks to
literally be squeezed out of the walls by the pressure from the excess
weight.
At Ohio Wesleyan I also encountered variations on two of the stories
discussed at your site. Ohio Wesleyan's 1970's version of the claim that
bland institutional dorms use the same design used in prisons had to do
with the fact that the school's newest, most antiseptic dorm at the time
had been built in 1968, during the Vietnam War. As the story went, the
building's construction had been financed with government funding, on the
condition that the dorm be built with a design that would enable it to be
pressed into service as a hospital, in the event of an overflow of injured
soldiers.
At Ohio Wesleyan I also encountered a variant of the "Psychic
Predicts Halloween Mass Murder" legend, this one specific not only to that
college, but to the dorm I lived in one year. That dorm was connected to
the dorm next door by an underground tunnel. A rumor circulated that a
psychic had predicted that there would be an axe murder that winter, in a
basement area, at a small college somewhere in the Midwest. Thus, as your
site discusses as often being the case, with details such as the shape of
the building where the murders will occur, and the athletic conference of
the college where it will happen, this story gave details which fit the
college and the building in question, without naming them specifically as
the place where the murder would occur. Also, as your site says was often
the case when Jeanne Dixon was alive, this story did name Dixon as the
psychic who had made the prediction, though there was nothing specified
about any talk show on which she had done so, or even to the effect that
the prediction had been made on a talk show at all. Something I wonder
now is whether this story circulated every year. Since there was only
year I lived in either of the dorms connected by the tunnel, I don't know
whether the supposed prediction of a murder in "a basement area" made its
way around those two dorms every year, or just happened to circulate in
the year when I lived in one of these buildings.
I know there's a lot here, but I hope it will be useful, as most of
these stories are variations which I believe are not included at your
site.

[Griffin2020]

As much as I searched and I searched, I failed to fined a point anywhere in there. May I beat the sender with a clue-by-four?

[Casey]

There was a point, but I think I need new glasses after reading that!

[ParaDiddle]

I actually thought it was a pretty good letter. The writer has obviously spent some time on snopes.com, tells a well formatted story with paragraph (single HR) breaks and is simply offering some addtional info to that which is contained on the site. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the writer is a registered member of the MB.

- P

[Fun with a 9mm]

"Animal House was based on Chris Miller's experience at his own fraternity (Alpha Delta Phi) at the Ivy League's Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, now chronicled in his 2006 memoir "The Real Animal House", in which he describes his sophmore year at Dartmouth and his first in Alpha Delta Phi. Additional inspiration came from Harold Ramis's experiences at Washington University in St. Louis where he was a member of Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity and Douglas Kenney's fraternity experiences as well."

Heard this from SO, BEFORE the memoir came out. This is SO's frat, he was there as a frosh the year CM was a senior and claims "Animal House" is seriously watered down from what really went on. From some of the stories he tells, I agree.

Originally Posted by ParaDiddle

I actually thought it was a pretty good letter. The writer has obviously spent some time on snopes.com, tells a well formatted story with paragraph (single HR) breaks and is simply offering some addtional info to that which is contained on the site. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the writer is a registered member of the MB.

I agree. Compared to most of the comments snopes shares with us, this one is the great American novel.

I think every school has similar legends to the ones mentioned.

Originally Posted by snopes

This is the story about buildings designed for riot
control. The main administration building at UMass looks like an
oversized concrete bunker,

There was a similar rumor at Carnegie Mellon regarding Wean Hall being a bomb shelter/riot building etc. Why can't it just be an ugly building made of prefabricated concrete?


We also had rumors of sinking buildings because they don't line up with adjacent buildings. For example, at CMU if you are on the 2nd floor of Newell-Simon Hall and crossed into Wean Hall, you would then be on the 4th floor of Wean Hall. Did Wean Hall sink two stories? It gets worse. If you then took the elevator to the 8th floor of Wean Hall and crossed into Doherty Hall, you were now on the 3rd floor of Doherty Hall. There was no sinking. It is the result of having buildings built on and around the hills of Pittsburgh.

One rumor that CMU has that has been repeated by adminsitration (but they might just be re-iterating the same legend) is why a lot of the older academic buidings have sloped floors in the hallways. Apparently, when Andrew Carnegie built Carnegie Tech many years ago, he wasn't sure that his school idea would work so he made his buildings with sloped floors so that they could be easily converted to assembly lines if the school failed.

[texaschristian]

Hmm... Some of the buildings at Sam Houston State University (Huntsville, TX) were designed with below-ground areas for use as fallout shelters in the event of a nuclear attack (during the cold war...). I head this rumor and searched microfish files of both student newspapers and the local city newspaper, and found articles circa 1950s that backed it up. As well, the articles contained copies of pamplets circulated by the government to citizens detailing the emergency plan in the event of an attack. Unfortunately it was several years ago that I graduated from that University, and I'm writing this post from my desk at work... so I don't have references handy.

[Judecat]

Lots of Schools and colleges were built with bomb shelters in the basement -- they all had signs that that's where you were supposed to go in case of a nuclear attack -- So Sam Houston is not unique in that. The only school I ever attended that did not have a bomb shelter in the basement was Community College, and that was probably because they weren't finish building it when I attended. The bomb shelter/fallout shelter was in the high school next door.
(yeah, I'm old, I remember Duck and Cover drills in elementary school)

[moonfall]

I heard the "Animal House" story from my dad...except the fraternity in question was Delta Tau Delta (his old frat). I think this may be like the "retired from the party school list" legend where everyone claims their school/fraternity was the inspiration.

[Gayle]

The riot control landscaping rumor is here as well.

http://www.utwatch.org/archives/pole...dactivism.html

Originally Posted by Judecat

Lots of Schools and colleges were built with bomb shelters in the basement -- they all had signs that that's where you were supposed to go in case of a nuclear attack -- So Sam Houston is not unique in that. The only school I ever attended that did not have a bomb shelter in the basement was Community College, and that was probably because they weren't finish building it when I attended. The bomb shelter/fallout shelter was in the high school next door.
(yeah, I'm old, I remember Duck and Cover drills in elementary school)

This is irrelevant for most countries but some of the buildings in my university are in fact designed to be bomb shelters. The establishment in question is the University of Haifa, Israel. Our campus (excluding the dormitories) consists of 8 buildings, 4 of which were constructed prior to 1970. Those are built of 50cm to 1 meter thick reinforced concrete. The newer ones only have shelters on the lower floors. I can't say that it's all useless - during the 2nd Lebanon war last year the city of Haifa was within the range of the Lebanese missiles and the shelters were frequently used.

Incidentally, the one UL we do have is that one of the buildings (the Eschol tower) has a secret floor which contains a military intelligence listening post. Rumor has it that the building has 31 (rather than the generally known 30) floors and that the elevators require a special code to go to the hidden level. This rumor is supported by the fact that the university is located on top of the Carmel mountain, which makes it's tower the highest (though not the tallest) building in Haifa - one can see the whole of Western Galille from the 30th floor observatory. I must admit though that I have made some efforts to find evidence for this level's existence and failed.

this rumor still circulates at the university of alabama. there is an all girls dorm on campus named Tutwiler. it is next door to a cemetary and across from the stadium. it is an odd shape, if you look at it from above it almost looks like a Y. there is a mental institution on campus called Bryce Hospital. the school is also in close proximity to lakes and two rivers, the cahaba and black warrior. there is also train tracks/a train about half a mile from tutwiler. no one stays in their dorms on halloween night.