My school, Caltech, is full of incredibly peculiar and crazy people who do incredibly peculiar and crazy things. They populate 8 Houses, dorms which–as in Harry Potter–sort of form your family at Tech. Each House has their own traditions, pastimes and stereotypes. During Rotation week, when all the freshmen choose their Houses (and the Houses choose their freshmen) everything is exciting and full of activity, as the Houses try to present what is unique about them.
In the seven days of Rotation, I will have pounded on a half-dozen tables, watched countless numbers of people get floated (a pitcher of ice water on the head, for various dinner infractions), observed people disappearing unsubtly in a cloud of colored smoke bombs, played Sweat (a pool ball game with two balls), danced about aimlessly, answered the question “where are you from?” 30 times, answered the question “would you fuck a goat for a million dollars?” 6 times, answered the question “what’s your favorite xkcd comic?” 3 times, played DDR and Mafia.
Here’s a game of Mafia in progress, they’re hardcore about it in Avery House. You sit in a circle and stare suspiciously at each other which the narrator, in a black trenchcoat, paces continuously around.
Apologies for bad picture quality. Someone brought their lizard, that was cool.
But the coolest thing by far was brought to us courtesy of the GDBG, as it is commonly abbreviated (often in Greek), the God Damn Blacker Gang, or more properly: Blacker House.
They’re the sort of folks who keep a fire extinguisher close on hand at all times.
Blacker House, though, is in charge of several things–perhaps the most interesting of which being the tunnels. The steam tunnels run under Caltech and connect to almost every building on campus: the tunnels themselves have large pipes, bundles of wire, other things that run from building to building between science laboratories; as well as lightbulbs to light the way. Unfortunately, not enough lightbulbs to get many decent pictures, so this description will be mostly in words. It cannot do justice to the experience, though.
There is an entrance to the tunnels in many buildings, but generally one will need a “south master” key in order to get into the buildings or doors. These are easily obtainable by merely submitting a form requesting one in order to get into buildings late at night to turn in homework, which is actually a very useful thing. But anyway, once one has a key, find a door (usually in the basement) with this sign on it:
Open that door, and go inside. You will see an array of pipes, wires, fans, etc.–it looks like a sort of maintenance room:
This is boring. Keep walking–to the left, off the frame in this picture, and you will come to a tunnel. Provided you’re not exceedingly tall, or swing your elbows too much, you should fit comfortably in the tunnel, with large steam pipes and wires to your left and right. It’s very warm here and dreadfully stuffy, as some of the pipes carry hot steam. Only a few of them do, but don’t touch anything with insulation, just in case.
You make your way through these tunnels, single file. Sometimes you have to step over a pipe, sometimes duck under. Sometimes you have to walk across a precarious board spanning a gap. You try to keep your sense of direction–it’s hard, but possible. Mainly the tunnels run east-west and north-south, and there are labels and landmarks to help you.
If you pause and look at the walls, they are graffiti’d by decades of Caltech students. Here, a particular spot the prefrosh are often taken to which notes, with frustration, that Caltech has taken from him $10,000 $30,000 $40,000 dollars, tired him out, taken years, tortured him with work, and now:
Five hours ago they gave me my diploma.
It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.
And I just want to sit here and cry.
Does anyone understand how I feel?
Elsewhere, in giant black lettering, there is the phrase CALTECH SUCKS -HM, a gift from Harvey Mudd students who snuck in, spray-painted it, and then spent hours wandering lost in the tunnels. Lore says they never returned, but I’m sure Blacker students brought them back safe and sound.
In many locations, you find the letters GDBG, DEI, FEIF–the first I’ve already explained, the second stands for Dabney Eats It. Apparently, Dabney House has eaten some pretty inedible things in the past. Fleming House, ever competitive, came up with the third: Fleming Eats It Faster.
The tunnels can be used to access different things: the physics and chemistry buildings, to turn in sets, the CS building, because the lab’s always locked, and the basement of the biology building, which has a fantastic ice cream vending machine that is technically not accessible to students.
Back into the tunnels you go. The steam tunnels are hot and stuffy, mostly, but suddenly the air grows cold, windy. Hand over hand you go, down a metal ladder into a black expanse. It feels vast, you can hardly see, but you can barely make out the word FEAR on the wall, in giant letters.
Suddenly, your guides extinguish their flashlights, and direct you to do the same. It is pitch black, deep black, not a speck of light black. This is the darkest place on campus–quite the claim, in a campus entirely serviced by underground tunnels. It is so dark you’re afraid to move for fear of hitting a wall, or another person.
Then your guides scream “Run!” and they are already running, hollering and clattering so you go in the right direction. And you run, pitch-black and freezing cold, following the wind in the dark concrete hallway. You stop before you hit the wall, hopefully, and look up at the grate that opens to the sky. Flashlights on, now, walk slowly back. Examine the walls for hieroglyphics and fake Greek lettering.
The word FEAR confronts you again–it is a mural, one of several done by the artist who signs his works The Cow. It is a series, including Fear, Love, Hate, Hope, etc. You see them all in the extended tour, find the symbols that stand for each House, and the mark: The Cow.
Back up the metal ladder, hand over hand, ten feet up, don’t step on someone’s head, mind the fingers and feet. Back in the tunnels again, and here is the place where Feynman slept–he lost a bet with a student, he was a great better, and agreed to sleep in the tunnels. A decrepit old mattress remains in an unpleasant but roomy concrete alcove.
Next, on to the old Ditch Day stacks. At Caltech, there is a tradition–annual senior Ditch Day. Ditch Day (which is always tomorrow, truly: if asked, a senior always responds “Get some sleep, because Ditch Day’s tomorrow, frosh!” even if it’s 2pm, tomorrow is christmas, and you’re a junior). On Ditch Day at ‘Tech, seniors build elaborate setups, called “stacks,” that challenge the frosh to complete tasks. Ditch Day stacks have included everything from breaking apart concrete blocks using sound waves to puzzles. Well, as one can imagine, a lot of stacks take place in the tunnels.
One stack involves a narrow crawlspace–crawl up the ramp, forward, turn left, dead end, double back, crawl down, hoist yourself up, over, under, through, and finally back out the way you came. It is close and claustrophobic, but quite sturdy, even these years later, though it gets pretty dusty. Caltech students can build.
Next, come in here–it’s dirty and dusty on the floor, broken pieces of concrete everywhere. Connect the wires, just there. Suddenly, a dozen points of green light appear on the walls, the bright electric green of Caltech laser pointers. You must pass through the dark corridor without breaking the invisible beams.
You stir up the dust and the beams appear, startlingly clear, easy to see but hard to climb around. Mythbusters was wrong. It can be done. You contort and try your hardest not to interrupt the one long beam, reflected off numerous mirrors. On the walls, taped down, are the places where the frosh who had this Ditch Day stack had to press their hands to turn off the lasers.
Back out we go, through a half-dozen tunnels, left and right and over and mind the stairs, they’re steep, and you are outside again, breathing the cool night air with relief. Would you fancy a jaunt on the roofs? You bet you would.
Doesn’t security get riled up about all this? No, not really. It’s technically not allowed, no, to be under or over or anything but in the school, however, as long as you don’t do something stupid like throw flaming computer parts or pumpkins cooled in liquid nitrogen off the roof, you’ll be fine. And would Caltech students ever do anything like that? Fire waterfall, fire tornado, dry ice ice cream, fire swallowing, dry ice smoke rings, fireworks, maybe. But not that.
From the roof you can see stars, buildings, the lights of the city, low-flying helicopters. If you use this pipe for a boost, walk along here, hoist yourself up to here, and then get over (use your upper body strength, point the flashlight low, and for god’s sake jump lightly), you find yourself sitting in a square piece of the roof with four walls about four feet high. You sit down and relax there, for a moment, toying with the gravel, and contemplating the solitude. It is beautiful and quiet, you can see stars and the top of the Millikan building. It is a good place for watching an eclipse, but being Caltech students you ponder momentarily whether you could fill it with water and have a pool party up here. Probably not. But it’d be grand.
You sit there a long while, listening and talking every now and again. You ask a few questions, you ponder the other places on campus that one cannot yet get to. Stretches of tunnel under Avery House, not yet explored. The rooftop of Millikan, the basement of Jorgensen.
Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, you climb down, down four flights of stairs, and out of the building bold as brass into the courtyard. The tunnel tour is officially over. Quite the trip. Maybe one day you’ll be the one giving the tour to starry-eyed prefrosh, showing them where to retrieve their chem sets at 4am, and where to get the secret ice cream. Maybe one day you’ll graffiti a segment of your own. Maybe you’ll help pass down the rich oral history of Caltech–much of which is whispered in faux-mysterious tones in between these stuffy tunnels.
But first you need to get your hands on a south master. 
