Four Men, One Room

By DONALD A. JURIVICH '76

The secret formula that matched four freshman from the class of ‘76 in a corner suite of Wigglesworth Hall produced a very wiggy experience. On paper, the match was perfectly balanced: two midwesterners and two east coasters, although one roommate’s mother swore that one of the midwesterner’s had an east coast accent. We all rolled our eyes, not realizing that mom’s intuition proved to be a good sign. Each of us had an element of adaptability that made the year’s living experience a blast.

The four of us rallied early on to deal with the ridiculous Harvard Band march down Mass. Ave. during football season. One of the guys knew a med student who provided us with surgical tubing. This tubing was essential to launching water balloons from our third-floor window.

Too bad all of us missed the final draft induction for Vietnam because we had a wicked aim. The tuba dude didn’t have a chance.

Our barrage of water balloons scattered the band all over Mass. Ave. “That’ll learn them to wake us up on Saturday mornings.” No sooner were we reveling in our victory than we had to scram from University police knocking at our door. Thank goodness Depression-era architects saw the wisdom of putting fire-doors between suites which could serve as escapes from one entry to another for whatever reason.

Our spat with authority didn’t stop after that. One Saturday morning the four of us decided to catch a Harvard football game. We didn’t have our raccoon coats, but one of us had a military knapsack to hide the half-gallon of Mogan David during the game. Given a collective IQ of over 500 you would think we would know how to strap the knapsack tight. But no, we loaded our vino only to have it tumble out of the sack in the middle of the Wigglesworth entry onto Mass. Ave. and at the feet of President Bok.

Quick to respond, President Bok smiled and said, “bad luck.”