# The Munger Residence Hall Project. Let's talk about it **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 29, 2021, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495 "2021-10-29T23:50:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 16
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/301 "2023-07-31T02:44:55Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I was liking it until I saw that most rooms wouldn’t have windows, and also the fact that the suite common areas have all the charm of a prison day room. - Munger is a billionaire. He’s reminding the students of their place in society. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/302 "2023-07-31T03:18:44Z")
I think he intends it as a social experiment, to force students out of their rooms and into common areas. > [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I don’t know why they can’t design it so every room has a window. They could. With any luck they will. The whole point of the design is to rob students of access to natural light and fresh air. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/303 "2023-07-31T04:06:27Z")
Jester West Hall in the University of Texas (Austin) has 3,200 students in it, is 14 stories tall, and has a polling place for (public, not university) elections in it. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/304 "2023-07-31T06:59:43Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > I feel like we’ve talked about this before but were you at UCSD? We had Thursday night study breaks in the dorms. I was in Challenger Hall 82-84 Revelle, a few years earlier. I was in Beagle most of that time because I wanted to be in the German House, except for the year I spent in Germany living in an actual German house (well, German dorm anyway). I went back there in '18 to take photos for a photo class. As far as I can tell the Mud Hut balconies are all glassed in, what a shame. I know someone on here who was actually there at the same time I was, but he wouldn’t tell me who he is, or just couldn’t get around to it or something. He may have stopped posting here. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/305 "2023-07-31T07:46:10Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > As far as I can tell the Mud Hut balconies are all glassed in, what a shame. I loved living in a mud hut. Wasn’t Beagle right next door? I can’t believe they glassed in the balconies. We used to sit in beach chairs on the ledges outside of the windows. Crazy days. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/306 "2023-07-31T08:10:43Z")
For that matter, there’s a concert venue in Seattle that’s still named after Washington Mutual, a bank that hasn’t existed since it failed in 2008 and the government sold its assets to Chase. They kept the bank’s logo on the place for years until they eventually just decided that the “WaMu” in “WaMu Theater” now stands for “Washington’s Music”. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/307 "2023-07-31T18:54:40Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > I loved living in a mud hut. Wasn’t Beagle right next door? I can’t believe they glassed in the balconies. We used to sit in beach chairs on the ledges outside of the windows. Crazy days. The balconies do have windows that can be opened, but it’s not the same. The ledges by the individual windows are still accessible, though I imagine things are a lot more strict now. In my time roughly 1975 - early 1980, things were very, very easy going. RAs didn’t roust anyone for pot or alcohol, though we did hear that, at some other campuses like UCI, people had to be really stealthy about such things. You remember correctly that Challenger is next door to Beagle. Its glassed in balconies are visible to the left in this photo I took in '18. [![Imgur](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53084647594_90445235b5_b.jpg "Beagle Hall") ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/78538399@N00/53084647594/) The worst thing is that a newer slab-like high rise at the edge of campus has destroyed the ocean view that some of the west-facing Mud Hut balconies used to enjoy. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/308 "2023-07-31T20:07:36Z")
Thanks for sharing that. Things were so permissive back then that it’s crazy to imagine. It was my freshman year ('82-'83) that they first started to crack down but only slightly. They knew that if they totally cracked down there would be riots but they also knew that dorm life only had about a two year institutional memory so they took the slow boiling frog approach. Each year the rules tightened a little. In our time weekends were a constant loud party. I walked past the mud huts during my last year of grad school (1990) on a Saturday night and it was dead silence. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/309 "2023-07-31T22:05:31Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Each year the rules tightened a little. How did they go about tightening the screws? What were the first pins to be knocked down? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2023, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/310 "2023-07-31T22:36:42Z")
I think it was no kegs out in the open but they could be in a living space. Any drinking had to be inside so you couldn’t walk between dorms with a beer or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/311 "2023-08-01T17:07:00Z")
The state drinking age law was much less rigorously enforced generally. I wasn’t of age until spring quarter of my senior year, but we of the German House went down to the Rheinlander in La Jolla Shores numerous times before that. Then there was Spirits of St. Germain, where I never had a problem buying beer. Back then I liked to dress a little dressier, favoring sports jackets and pants that weren’t jeans, so I probably did look a few years older than I was. I’m in Oregon now, and I sometimes get carded. Because, you know, there might be a rash of teenagers disguising themselves as old people to obtain alcohol… ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/312 "2023-08-01T17:19:16Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > hen there was Spirits of St. Germain, where I never had a problem buying beer. You are unlocking so many memories! California law changed on Jan 1st 1994 making the penalties for serving an underaged person much more severe. Now the server/clerk and the place of business faced heavy fines. You could no longer just buy something or use a shitty fake ID. I had just turned 20. I had no problem buying booze at 18 or 19 but at 20 it was impossible until I discovered a trick. Driver’s licenses were on photo paper stock. My birthday is 12-23-63 so I took some chalk and covered up the leading 1 so it now said 2-23-63 and it never failed. It really should have read 02-23-63 but no one noticed. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/313 "2023-08-01T19:45:52Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > California law changed on Jan 1st 1994 making the penalties for serving an underaged person much more severe. You must mean '84, around the time of MADD and the introduction of the national drinking age. I’ve read of people – probably on here – who came of legal age in their states and could buy alcohol for a few days or weeks before the boom came down. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/314 "2023-08-01T19:48:09Z")
1984, of course. California was already 21 but some States had to change. Some of those just jumped to the new age so you could have been legal one day and then not the next for up to almost three years. Some grandfathered you in so there could be a situation where people born one day apart can have one drinking legally for three years and someone else having to wait it out. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2023, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/315 "2023-08-01T20:19:24Z")
I was able to drink legally before my two-and-a-half-year-older sister. During the half-year that I was 18 and she was 20, I happened to be on a trip to Canada (where the drinking age was 18). (I didn’t, because I had already figured out my intolerance to alcohol, but she still wasn’t amused when I called her and told her) ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/316 "2023-08-02T18:25:22Z")
I was eighteen for the 1968 election when the age was still twenty-one so I couldn’t vote. By the 1972 election I was twenty-two and could have voted anyway. My brother was nineteen and voting in his first election as well. I told him how unfair that was and as the older brother I should be able to dictate how he voted that one time. He didn’t buy it. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2023, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/317 "2023-08-02T20:27:46Z")
I was happy because I wouldn’t have turned 21 until a day or so after the 1972 election. Since they changed the age to 18, there was no problem. But years ahead of time I was really pissed that I would have missed my potential first presidential election by a day or two. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2023, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/318 "2023-09-26T00:45:48Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Jester West Hall in the University of Texas (Austin) has 3,200 students in it, is 14 stories tall, and has a polling place for (public, not university) elections in it. I’m sure that’s quite common. There was a small multipurpose room across the walkway from my dorm at UCSD, and I always voted at the polling place they set up there. I don’t remember what I did about my official address; my driver license had my home address on it until I renewed it about halfway through. I suppose any students, staff, or faculty members were automatically on that precinct roll. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2023, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/319 "2023-09-26T00:59:29Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > There was a small multipurpose room across the walkway from my dorm at UCSD, and I always voted at the polling place they set up there. We voted in the same place! But you knew that. They had those little PO Boxes under Argo and I used that as my address. It wasn’t 252 Challenger Hall. It was a Box number and the address of the University. I stayed in the dorms for two years and kept the same box. I showed up Sophomore year on the day the dorms opened and checked my box and there was a mailer for the special election that was being held that very day. It was to fill a vacancy on the school board or something. I read the statement that both of the candidates made and chose the one I liked best. I walked over at 2pm or so and I was the only voter all day. The only way that someone would have had the opportunity would be if they were using the same box for a second year, registered to vote, arrived on the first day the dorms opened up and gave a shit. My guy carried the precinct. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2023, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495/320 "2023-09-26T01:52:41Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > They had those little PO Boxes under Argo and I used that as my address. That’s right, I’d forgotten about our mailboxes under Argo. When I had to renew my driver license in my senior year, the DMV made me use a street address, so my address became 10007 North Torrey Pines! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495.md?page=15) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-munger-residence-hall-project-lets-talk-about-it/953495.md?page=17)