These are not experiences that can be replicated when my family is spread across Boston and Cambridge. They don’t understand that walking into the lounge just to see who’s there can then turn into the most meaningful conversations and jam sessions where you end up singing songs about beavers having sex underwater.
It upsets me when people say it shouldn’t matter that the dorm is gone if we were all really friends, because these people don’t understand what it’s like to dance the jitterbug to a jam/funk band in the Bexment while surrounded by your hall-mates. Most of my most fun memories are in fact because of Bexley. We played Smash Bros., painted walls, and ran around in ridiculous costumes in the name of dodge-ball. It was like having all the people that had the most in common with me wrapped up in a tiny burrito of awesomeness. Bexley was a place where I could actually go home and discuss things I cared about like film or photography. I was picking between MIT and art school, and so being surrounded by engineers is something I really struggle with. It’s hard to describe why Bexley is so special to me, but I think a lot of it boils down to not feeling alone. Did it make me cry? At least once a month. The same biting sarcasm that made me smile on Monday could be really hard to handle later in the week when my head was already reeling from my schoolwork. It gave me identity, it gave me family, but it also could be mean at times. Bexley was the worst and best part of my day all wrapped into one. When I got to campus, Bexley challenged me every single day, just like the Institvte did. My running tour was the highlight of my CPW, and I believe that experience is what finally made me comfortable enough to pick MIT. Then I encountered some residents from Bexley Hall and for the first and only time that weekend, I had fun. I came to MIT knowing I wanted to be a HASS major, and without the connection of loving math/science/insert STEM subject here I really struggled to identify with other MIT students.
I found very few students who had similar experiences to mine in high school. I think I am somewhat on my own when I say that I hated CPW.
For the last year and a half since Bexley closed I have been relatively unable to compile my thoughts into something coherent enough to be shared.