Early on a bright Sunday morning, Butterfield Dorm is like any other on campus. Parents have lined up along the curb and stand with massive piles of necessities. Blankets and pillows, CD collections, bottled water and everything else sit, cooling in a cool sunlight. Residents are bounding about, introducing themselves tentatively, impatiently wondering when their parents are going to leave. This is all new to them of course.
The only thing separating these students from the ones in Orchard Hill or Sylvan or Southwest is the reason that they stand and wait where they do.
On the night of May 24, and possibly into the morning of May 25, an individual or group of individuals went wild through Butterfield. Bathrooms were destroyed, couches were destroyed, fire extinguishers were destroyed. To make this easier, Butterfield was destroyed to the tune of a $30,000 dollar bill for damage and subsequent repair. That was after a tumultuous semester for the dorm, including the fall of Thomas Degnan, a student who had attempted to climb onto Butterfield’s roof to seize the building’s pirate flag. In a response specifically aimed at the vandalism, a group of University of Massachusetts administrators, including Director of Housing Services’ Michael Gilbert, ‘reprogrammed’ the building. ‘Reprogram’ is a euphemism for creating an entirely new community within a building.
In this case, the entirely new community consists of members of the Commonwealth College and RAP programs, as well as 26 upperclassmen who were given single rooms in the dormitory. However, there are brief shades of the old Butterfield. Three of the building’s RAs lived in Butterfield last year. Kara Turner was in England during the spring semester but had been an RA the previous autumn. Troy LoRusso was an RA in the building last year, including at the time of the vandalism. Mathilda Tanner was a resident who had been assigned to Butterfield before the decision was made to fracture the community. In all three cases, University administrators have said that there was no evidence that they were either involved in the vandalism or negligent in their duties as RAs.
With the Butterfield community scattered and the three RAs in Butterfield not talking, confirmation of what happened last year is tough to come by. Few students interviewed for this article seemed to know much about that final explosion of vandalism. Parents knew even less.
Govinda Hancock looks like a Butterfield resident. He has long hair and a scraggly beard, he is absent-mindedly fooling around with things in his room as he talks, he plays Bob Marley on his CD player. Of everybody interviewed for this article, he is the most disappointed in the University’s decision to ‘reprogram’ Butterfield. He is succinct about his frustration at the new building. “I’m upset. Butterfield was a cool, hippie dorm. Hopefully we can keep up the traditions.”
But then he adds, having lived in the dorm for only three days at the time of the interview, that most of the new residents aren’t, “the Butterfield type.” He offers little more explanation.
And what of those traditions?
He is one of the few residents who seem to know concrete facts about Thomas Degnan, the former UMass student who fell off the Butterfield roof attempting to seize the skull and crossbones flag that flew over the building. He also knows about the final night of vandalism, the catalyst for the building’s ‘reprogramming.’ He speaks fondly of a dormitory community that he was never a part of, telling a story of somebody who put a couch out on one of the building’s balconies so he’d have somewhere comfortable to smoke. Hancock thinks of that as a harmless, rebellious act.
Govinda Hancock cautiously adds that, when he says the traditions, he means the ones not involving vandalism. It could probably be assumed that he also means ones not involving injured students.
There are plenty of stories going around about Butterfield. One student reported that she’d heard “pirates used to” live in her room. Someone spoke of a resident trying to put the skull and crossbones on the building and falling. Stories abound about Butterfield being a clearinghouse of available drugs on campus. More and more of the stories are less about what happened last year, but instead about what happened within the past few days. These are new students who are meeting new people by volume. Caring about the history of their dorm is low on the list of immediate priorities.
There are former residents who want the new residents to know about their old dorm. Almost daily, they have been seen in the dormitory. These residents have been in the building instructing the interested in how to sneak kegs into the building (a time-honored tradition, no doubt) and at least one has returned to bemoan the ‘new’ Butterfield. It is, after all, a building without the murals that once adorned the walls, without the dining hall that once fed the building, without the booming music that once echoed from its walls.
But new residents and the building’s supervisors, want the building to move on. Last Tuesday night, there was a building wide meeting and at the meetings, students were told that they were welcome at the building and that anybody who’d been telling them otherwise was incorrect.
Nicole Brown, a freshman nursing major who is a member of the Commonwealth College, said of her peers that most “sort of” know what happened in the building, not hesitating to add that, “…now it’s completely different from what they said it was.”
There are consistent mentions of ‘they’ and ‘then’ and ‘how it was.’ These residents just don’t know, or at least, anymore than what they’ve heard through the grapevine. Their parents? They knew even less. Many asked more questions of the Daily Collegian than were asked of them.
“We were told she was moved because Baker didn’t have enough room for the RAP program.” Jennifer Atwood said. Her daughter, Tara Atwood, is a freshman majoring in Arts and Sciences. It seems that most parents were under the impression that Baker, which had previously housed the RAP Impact floor, simply ran out of room. A letter was sent to all students who expected to move into Baker that the dorm was full and the program had to be moved. Students, including Govinda Hancock, reported receiving the same letter. Impact is a RAP floor designed to promote community involvement.
Gilbert said that his department had talked to the directors of the RAP program and the Commonwealth College and offered Butterfield as an alternate site.
“We had a better site for them this year, so we notified them that they’d be moving into that building,” Gilbert said, referring to Butterfield. At no point during interviews with Gilbert did he say that that the Baker RAP had been filled to capacity. He later added that the Commonwealth College and RAP programs had been contacted because of their consistent success when it came to programming.
He said that anyone saying that Commonwealth College students were moved into the dorm because of their relative harmlessness was incorrect. He insisted that the students moved into the dorm were there because they were parts of successful programs on campus.
Of course, he also says the following, “hopefully, the new population won’t be problematic.”
Gilbert goes beyond hope. There is a new video camera on Van Meter, aimed towards Butterfield. Gilbert says he just wants to know who is trying to gain access to the building and to the roof, should anyone try. It is just another deterrent to Gilbert, another “tool” as he says.
Then there are the 26 upperclassmen. Corralled during the all-building meeting, the 26 students were told that they were to be ‘mentors’ for the building. There was little clarification about what that role would involve. ‘Mentors’ were to be role-models, but whether or not that involves any actual responsibility is unknown. Strangely, even the choosing of the 26 seems to be marred by a number of different stories. Gilbert claimed that all were supposed to have been members of the Commonwealth College
or RAP programs, but at least three have no relationship to either program. No information was available about the other 23. Regardless of the confusion, apathy reigns supreme.
The parents seemed relieved to know that their children would be moving into Honor’s dorms. Atwood said she would have ‘freaked’ if she’d known about how the dorm used to be, and said she didn’t know about anything that had happened at the dormitory previously. Karen and Dave Bernier agreed that Butterfield had a great location but wanted to know what happened on the final night. Dave Bernier said he remembered seeing something on the evening news – the family is from Holliston – but pressed for more information.
In a strange way, everyone seemed curious about what had happened, like there were friendly ghosts in the building that everyone wanted to meet. Some parents cracked jokes that “at least it isn’t Southwest.”
On Sunday morning, this is the new Butterfield: a confusing collection of old stories and completely new faces. The only evidence of students who care about the building’s past are the ones who want to see old dining hall opened. After a few days in Franklin, a dining hall of their own sounds downright divine to most new residents.
The UMass administrators have said, again and again, that the new residents are doing well and even Sunday morning, some on their first days in the dorm, there is little evidence to believe otherwise. In fact, the only edge in anyone’s voice comes when it comes to answering questions for articles like this.
Gilbert sounds like he is grinding his teeth when he says that he traditionally had more problems with the Butterfield community after they’d moved in. It’s as if he’s waiting for something that Butterfield isn’t going to do.
Govinda Hancock says it’s unfortunate what happened, but “change happens, and we have to deal.” Of course, Govinda didn’t have to deal with any change. None of the residents did. They all came after. They only need to adjust.
