Moving Into GWU's Freshman Zoo

When GWU first bought the brick 1930s-era building for student housing in the '60s, it was known as Superdorm.

Housing officials now are more likely to be talking about fostering intimacy and community, with fewer students per dorm and more space per student. Residence halls built last year in the United States had a median capacity of slightly more than 300 students. Thurston is a big ol' dorm. Not compared with the whopping 3,000 students in one tower at the University of Texas, though. And Howard University has a larger dorm for upperclassmen.

But 1,100 is a lot of 17-to-19-year-olds unleashed in one place.

GWU is known for its swanky new housing with kitchens and dining rooms; it ranked third on the Princeton Review's "dorms like palaces" list this year. And yet, more often than not, it's the old, cramped Thurston, with its exposed pipes and dead bugs in the fluorescent lights, that sticks.

In 1968, students refused to leave the lounge of the then-all-female dorm at midnight curfew, telling campus police they were holding a love-in. During the Vietnam War, protesters marched from Thurston three blocks to the White House. One alum remembered people getting hosed down at the doors to wash off crowd-control chemicals.

Former Virginia governor Mark Warner (D) told students he did some partying when he lived in Thurston in the '70s and liberated some ice cream from the cafeteria pre-dawn. In the '80s, students in Thurston welcomed newly elected President Ronald Reagan to Washington, chanting, "Bonzo, Bonzo." In 1992 some company supposedly announced that they ate more pizza than any other dorm in the country.

Former GWU president Stephen Joel Trachtenberg stayed in Thurston one night, much of it spent answering the door for the stacks of pizzas that pranksters had ordered delivered to his room. "I'm told that there are no windows or clocks in casinos in Las Vegas because they want people to have a sense of timelessness -- just keep gambling. That's sort of how it is in Thurston," he said.

"Mostly it's -- when I think about it, I have good warm sentiments," he said. "It's a wonderful metaphor for the entire undergraduate experience."

Not everyone has warm sentiments. In 1979, many students slept through a fire alarm, and more than 30 were injured. Two years ago, a student was badly burned in another fire.

Lots of incoming freshmen chose to live in smaller, quieter dorms. Some parents called the housing office after checking Facebook, asking that their child be switched to another dorm. Many who are moving in -- members of GWU's academically strongest class ever -- said they are a little worried about when, exactly, they will study. Or sleep.

Last year two freshmen sold about 400 Thurston T-shirts, inspired by all the people treated for excessive drinking by EMeRG, the school's volunteer emergency medical service: I got EMeRGed, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

A GWU spokeswoman said Thurston did not have a disproportionate share of the cases of overconsumption of alcohol last academic year: 58 of the 109 freshman cases.

Oh, and a spokeswoman for Playboy said it has never done a list of the most sexually active residence halls. Sorry.

But who needs facts when you can live in an urban legend?

GWU's new president, Steven Knapp, who helped freshmen move in yesterday, will live across the street from Thurston. He wants to be in the heart of campus. Some of the neighbors have told him they hope that has a calming (and quieting) effect on the students.

Students have told him that he should expect pranks.

Yesterday Hanover unpacked his lacrosse stick while one of his roommates showed how he had rigged up a shower curtain for a shred of privacy between two bunk beds just a few feet apart.

"It's kind of small," Hanover said, "but it's home -- right?

"It's a privilege," he said. "That's the word I would use."