<p>Lloyd frosh move in first and then draw cards for order. You can choose your own roommate. When I was a frosh, picks were done by card order. This year, we decided to have a little fun and room picks were essentially done as a foot race to the desired room with delayed starting time based on the card pick order. I have no clue if we're going to do it again.</p>
<p>So, since Llama decided to post her Blacker description, I'll post mine for Lloyd. (If you see any issue with anything I say, dLo, feel free to chime in).</p>
<p>Lloyd is a North House and we're called, very originally, Lloydies. Our motto is "I live and die for those I love". It's a pretty good motto, and it's somewhat applicable: Although lloydies are not die hard loyalists, we certainly support and stick up for each other. That being said, we are a very non-exclusive house. We even let Rudds walk through our house (the thought makes me shiver!!!)-- ok, kidding on the shiver part.</p>
<p>As you may have figured out from my previous words, Lloyd has somewhat of a rivalry with Ruddock, although sometimes I think we have it solely to have a rivalry with someone. It doesn't really mean anything.</p>
<p>Our house is a quite diverse. The defining characteristic of Lloyd is probably that it doesn't have any especially defining characteristics-- we aren't nerd house, or jock house, or hippie house. We're normal house. We're relatively athletic, often placing second in sporting events. Dinners are fun and almost always around 30 minutes long. Every once in a while, some people throw rolls (cough me cough) but it's not a common occurance. Our dinner involves eating and announcements, and often a "dinner game". Dinner games are basically just the waiter's way of humiliating a person (not really humiliating--it's typically enjoyable for all involved) through outlandish tasks. The person humiliated is almost always the house president.</p>
<p>Just to give you an idea of what I mean, I'll tell you about a few of my friends. My roommate Eric is a tall skinny guy who loves to fence and watch "The show" and most of all loves dark chocolate. I could probably bribe him to do my laundry with dark chocolate. Chris has a thick beard, likes anime probably a little too much, is learning Japanese, and is obsessed (in a good way) with all things computer. Paul also likes anime, I think he's replaying pokemon right now, and really enjoys a good joke. Ali is Paul's roommate and is always mocksparring with me and complaining that he's getting fat (he's not). Jan is Chris's roommate and likes drinking tea, playing unreal tournament, and procrastinating way beyond what anyone else can do. Jan is also a EE, like me. I also hang out with Noele and Narain, both EEs. Narain is a guy with the thickest glasses I've ever seen. He also happens to be very funny (although often unintentionally). Noele is a short girl who will often tell you how much she loves being short. She's involved with DARPA and often tells me how she doesn't really understand what she's doing, although I'm sure part of that is a result of modesty. Anyway, those are my main group of friends. They all have completely different interests and personalities, but together with the rest of Lloyd form a really awesome cohesive unit of amazingness. </p>
<p>A few house traditions of Lloyd's involve the mysterious ritual surrounding the Lloyd shirt (don't ask, because I can't tell you), "Intimidations" (probably can't tell you that either, but it's really fun), Super Smash Brothers, and Army of Darkness. I'm sure there are plenty more I don't know of, I'm but a lowly frosh hehe.</p>
<p>Super Smash Brothers- It's the official house game. You can find people playing in the Shed, our AV room, almost any time of day. By the way, the Shed is Lloyd's tribute to technological supremacy. We have a completely blacked out room (black walls, black window shades) that has a high definition projector (720p for those who care), a TIVO hooked up to satellite tv, dvd player, and a mac mini hooked into our "shared" server, Lloydradio. It's awesome.</p>
<p>Army of Darkness- It's a movie that is watched every midterm movie night. When it's mentioned during dinner, people pound their fists on the table for ten minutes at a time. I still haven't seen it due to my laziness.</p>
<p>It's also worth mentioning that Lloyd has a hot tub that we enjoy using on occasion.</p>
<p>Social events include ski trip, midterm movie night, random eating events (where we just get food and eat it haha), senior frosh breakfast, and more that I can't recall at the moment. Recently we went to Grauman's Chinese Theater (formerly named Mann's Chinese Theater--one of the most famous theaters in the world) in Hollywood to see 300 (a movie). It was quite an enjoyable event. </p>
<p>In summary, we are not boring house, but we aren't constantly do activities house. We're bound and defined by our relationships with each other--I love Lloyd so much not because of anything we do, but because of who we are. You'll hopefully get a good idea of that during rotation.</p>
<p>Also, Lloyd is an original Super Smash Bros. only House. It's a bit of a shame because lizzardfire's roommate is an amazing Melee player (with Kirby no less!) He only gets a chance to play Melee when he visits us non-Lloydie heathens. :D</p>
<p>It's really nice of you guys to go through the trouble of writing all of this up for us. This thread has helped me -and others I'm sure- learn quite a bit about caltech, and it's probably the most insightful thread I've read so far about life at tech.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure Caltech's the place for me as of now, but I'll see once I visit during PreFrosh weekend. (I haven't had the chance to visit before :( )</p>
<p>Ben and lizzardfire have the right approach here--good job guys on writing all of this up! I always thought it was a bit silly how worked up the IHC types got over what boils down to, after all, suppressing the free flow of information.</p>
<p>Very informative for all the prefrosh, I'm sure!</p>
<p>Lloyd is original only? Now that's just awful;; I guess Lloyd isn't my favorite anymore ;)</p>
1 Like
<p>That's not entirely true, melee is played on occasion here... but very rarely. To be honest, if the shed isn't taken up, people will pretty much play anything you put up.</p>
<p>Oh yeah with all this information, you guys should help improve the House</a> System at the California Institute of Technology wikipedia article, which is not very well written right now. That would be helpful.</p>
<p>So, to go along with UndulyLlamarific and lizzardfire's posts, I thought I'd share my own thoughts on Fleming and elaborate a bit on Ben Golub's description.</p>
<p>Fleming is one of the recently renovated South houses. Some general information about the house can be found at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleming_House#Fleming_House%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleming_House#Fleming_House</a>. Fleming is a very tight knit community and more similar to the traditional frat than most other houses.</p>
<p>The main stereotype is that we are the jock house so I'll start with that. Many Flems are active in various sports and Flems make up a good portion of Caltech's intercollegiate teams. We also take interhouse athletics seriously, and typically a lot of people show up to these events either to play or support the house. We have a lot of people who enjoy working out. There is even a gym within the house, although currently all the equipment is still in storage due to the south house renovations. Every weekend, we have a football game out on Broad lawn and many head over to Mannion's to watch Sunday football. With this said however, only a small minority within the house is actually fanatical about sports. You don't need to participate in any athletic events or even like sports to fit in. However athletics does bring the house together and create a lot of house pride.</p>
<p>We are also the poker house. Again, only a minority seriously plays the game, but Fleming has become associated with it. On some weekends, we have home games and there have been a few organized trips to local casinos. Some play online. During last year's rotation Fleming passed out fliers with a lot of interesting statistics about the house. One read, "Flems with career poker winnings over $200,000 - 5". Poker is just a fun hobby for a few Flems.</p>
<p>Flems typically shy away from the "geekier" activities. I don't think anyone plays D&D or Magic the Gathering. Very few watch anime. And, while there are a number of people who play video games including Smash, it's not very widespread. Ben mentioned that Fleming is not so intellectual, and this is true. There are some truly brilliant people in Fleming, but sometimes this isn't readily apparent. Casual conversations usually aren't academic in nature. In fact, mentioning class or work during dinner will get you floated. From my perspective, this lack of "intellectualness" is great, since Caltech itself already provides plenty of intellectual stimulation.</p>
<p>Our dinners are typically loud and boisterous; most seem to enjoy it. During dinner there are a number of rules, one of which I've mentioned, enforced by the waiters. Violation of the rules gets you floated. This just means you get a pitcher of ice water dumped on you at the end of dinner. Those getting floated can either take the water, or "fight it" and try to get the waiters wet. We throw napkins and play frosh games, silly activities designed to get frosh floated. None of these things are mandatory and no one will force you to do things against your will.</p>
<p>We have a number of very interesting personalities in the house but I'd rather not post specific details online without permission. In general, the people are nice and helpful. Upperclassmen with cars will often give rides when asked. We have a lot of events on the weekends and midnight/early-morning trips to Denny's and Pantry on the weekdays. We also have a lot of interesting traditions, but many of these you prefrosh will have to discover for yourselves if you rotate into Fleming. Fleming is a great fit for a specific type of Techer, but not everyone would enjoy it, as is true for every house.</p>
<p>That's really all I can think of for now. Keep in mind that this is from the perspective of a frosh and I could be wrong on certain issues. But I have tried to be as accurate in my description as possible. If you have specific questions, feel free to ask.</p>
<p>As an old IHC Chair, I'll say an obvious caveat: these posts are naturally the opinion of their writers...</p>
<p>As noted earlier, many people's impressions of other Houses are only snippets of the House culture. The IHC doesn't want to restrict information flow, we just modify our rules every year to try to filter out as much misinformation as possible, with varying levels of success.</p>
<p>For example, you will likely hear (it is false), that anyone that ranks Ricketts will get in. I can conclusively tell you that this is not true, though I can't give you specific names.</p>
<p>I'll probably rewrite the House system wiki page one of these days. I'm somewhat of a history dork, so I'm all into this sort of thing.</p>
<p>-Craig</p>
<p>PS - Thanks Joe, you're just saying that cause they're Republican :-P But yeah, the Honor Code boils down to "don't be jerks to each other" (or more famously said as "be excellent to each other") and it applies to the House System and Rotation, as well as everything else here.</p>
<p>Haha, Craig, I didn't even know that Ben was, actually! Nor that it was still well-known that <em>I</em> am for that matter.</p>
<p>Anyway, as to "you will likely hear (it is false), that anyone that ranks Ricketts will get in"--it's at least a rumor grounded in fact, because "in my day" it was true or very nearly true. I know the rules have probably been changed many times in the intervening years though.</p>
<p>Will a female frosh who chooses to live in Avery have any difficulty meeting or socializing with the undergrads who live in the other houses?</p>
<p>Not if she spends time with people of other houses (meaning she takes initiative). If she lives in Avery and never leaves Avery and goes to other houses, than she'd have a hard time socializing with them. When you say frosh, do you mean prefrosh/class of 2011 or frosh/class of 2010? If you're talking about a new student, I wouldn't make the "decision" to be in one particular house until going through rotation. There are definite pluses/minuses to living in any particular house.</p>
<p>If there's one problem with the house system, it is that once people settle into the house they're in, they tend to stop interacting with people from other houses. This isn't always true--extracurricular activities and classes can still keep people in contact with each other--but it is often the case. Also, <em>in my opinion in the past</em>, people who live in Avery tend to be even more removed from the rest of campus than people who live in the north or south houses. This is the result of the fact that Avery is physically removed from the north and south houses, and I think it is also the result of the personality types that tend to end up in Avery. So the short answer to your question is that she has the ability to go out and socialize outside the house, but if she isn't particularly inclined to, then it may not happen.</p>
<p>I would not say that there are <em>any</em> "personality types that tend to end up in Avery." We're on our second year of admitting incoming freshmen, and "in the past" often means in the days before Avery started taking frosh, which is a different matter. It's hard to generalize about the personality type in Avery; I can only say there are all kinds of amazing people here. There are people who don't like to interact with other houses, but there are people who do. </p>
<p>But it's definitely true that Avery is physically more removed from the other houses (even though...it's only a couple of minutes). It takes three minutes to walk down there, and it's unfortunate that it doesn't happen more. But the House System seems to be such that even houses which are right next to each other have little interaction. So this is neither a problem compounded by Avery itself or necessarily by its physical distance :D could be wrong, though. Just my opinion. But definitely, if you want to socialize with other houses, you have to have the inclination to do so.</p>
<p>Well stated. Just for clarification, I based my earlier statement on my own generalization of this year's and last year's Avery frosh classes, since I know many in them.</p>
<p>"Will a female frosh who chooses to live in Avery have any difficulty meeting or socializing with the undergrads who live in the other houses?"</p>
<p>I would say more difficulty than if she'd lived in any of the 7 traditional houses, but not impossible. To be more precise, someone who values socializing to any extent is in my opinion more likely to choose one of those 7 houses (and they are all very different from each other). Part of this is simple physical proximity.</p>
<p>I'm curious as to what prompted the question, though. It seems very specific at a point in time when it probably shouldn't be.</p>
<p>Although my daughter couldn't attend prefrosh, she knew a few kids who went. They did not think she would like the regular houses, and one suggested that she probably would be more comfortable in Avery.</p>
<p>People should form their own opinions and minimize their dependence on others' notions of them (including their parents).</p>
<p>Wow, I didn't even notice VaMom3's question :p</p>
<p>
[quote]
Will a female frosh who chooses to live in Avery have any difficulty meeting or socializing with the undergrads who live in the other houses?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The female frosh I know who live in Avery seem to have no problems with this. It varies with person, but they do hang out with people from other houses a lot. A couple of these people are, in fact, coming to Avery next year.</p>
<p>But definitely, before dismissing the other houses she should either visit, or reserve judgment until rotation ;)</p>