TUNNELS: WESLEYAN'S ARCHITECTURAL SUBCONSCIOUS by Brian Edwards-Tiekert "I got out of a show in the '92 and went to the basement of the chapel to pee. I saw this door open down there, and I poked my head through. It was the tunnels, but older than any I've seen before. They were real hot, and there were these giant pipes running next to my head; you could hear machinery through the walls, and the place was like throbbing. Twenty minutes later I came up in a boiler room, opened a door, and I was in Olin. I went back down and started walking back. I saw this ladder off the side, there was a manhole cover at the top. I climbed it, lifted it up, stuck my head through, and I was outside, somewhere behind Olin, staring right at Public Safety." If you've been on campus more than a week, you've heard about the tunnels- "They can take you anywhere on campus," someone says. "I heard there's one that goes all the way to the Connecticut River," another chimes in. "I heard there were people living down there." "They found a mummy down there, I think." "I heard they made LSD for the Dead under WestCo." The tunnels are the Wesleyan underground, the twisted mess of hallways, service corridors, storage tombs, and humming machinery that writhe beneath the surface of everything we do at Wesleyan. They are Wesleyan's challenge to students: conquer my frontiers, discover my history, probe my myths and legends. Behind each locked door lies a world of possibility, so each lock becomes a test of will; sealed store-rooms and furniture graveyards are time-capsules for a university that never throws anything away. The layered slogans, poetry, murals, tags, and petty rants of generations of students are an evolving history of creative vandalism at Wesleyan. Shadowy hallways extend through countless legends, and each trip through the convoluted corridors gives birth to even more convoluted stories. If there is any space on campus that students can claim as their own, these are it. The graffiti decor marks the tunnels as student domain, the dismantled locks defy those who would keep them bound, and the stories that circulate campus record their history as the site of student adventure, folly, and debauchery in a rich (and often embellished) oral tradition. These hallowed halls have a peculiar effect on those who would lay claim to them-some call it tunnel fever. Any clean-cut well-behaved frosh that comes across an open door into the graffiti-washed hallways beneath his/her dorm immediately turns to thoughts of lockpicks and crowbars. It's an explorer's complex: suddenly you're Columbus, Magellan, Neil Armstrong-mapping the unknown, pushing the limits of myth and mystery, claiming new territories and, yes, plundering everything in sight. First comes the drive to chart every dingy corner of the poorly-lit tunnels you've discovered-no matter what it takes, you'll get through every door Physical Plant had the temerity to lock. Satisfied with your prowess, you may feel the urge to mark the your new territory with magic markers and spray-paint. Finally, the kleptomania sets in: you take home broken circuit boards because they look cool, padlocks because you managed to pick them; you 'liberate' armchairs and bookshelves from physical plant's furniture morgues, take 50-year-old copies of the blue book from long-forgotten file storage. If you're lucky enough you may come across a store-room full of old books and vintage clothing that the class of 1977 entrusted to physical plant for the summer-suddenly you're looting faster than a Yale archaeologist in a Mayan tomb. This is the birth of a new student, driven to explore the forbidden, dismantle barriers, and look behind every locked door simply because it's locked. You're part of a tunnel-generated culture of resistance. Private Property loses all meaning in the tunnels-if it's not in use, it's anyone's. Each locked door is an injustice, and the battle-lines are clearly drawn: it's you against whoever installs the locks. You'll confront the deadbolts, padlocks, and silent alarms that are the symbols of authority-and you will overcome. The tunnels breed champion thieves. When the Douglas Cannon was returned to the students last year, one student vented his frustration: "I was sure that they were keeping it in the safe in the basement of Public Safety. I'd been sneaking down there through the tunnels at night, trying out every combination in order. I was almost halfway through, and the bastards went and gave it away!" A walk under WestCo is a course in burglary. You'll come across doors with four of more foiled locks that have been foiled in as many ways. First students dismantle the key-lock and pry it out of the door. Physical plant welds a steel chain above the mangled doorknob and applies a padlock. Students cut or saw off the chain. Physical Plant responds with a hinged lock mounting that's impossible to cut. Students pry these off with crowbars. If they decide they really need to keep the room locked, the boys of Physical Plant will install a new metal door with a two inch deadbolt. In at least one place, tunnelers have ripped such doors entirely out of their frames. As often as not, there's nothing terribly important behind these doors. Physical Plant just locks things up out of habit, and students break in because-you guessed it-the room was locked. Tunnel graffiti is the most extreme on Wesleyan's campus, owing to the peculiar nature of the space. Even though almost anyone might read the graffiti written in the tunnels, it's not a public forum-no-one can admit publicly that they were in a position to read it. Every comment is scrawled in complete confidence between author and reader. Every wall-artist has complete freedom of expression, no matter how violent, offensive, or debauched the sentiments s/he expresses. The intrepid tunneler finds him/herself privy to the working of the campus' collective id, assaulted by slogans that would incite riots if they were written anywhere else. They cover every pole of politics, from swastikas, rape stories (from the rapist's point of view), and homophobic slurs ("AIDS is God's Wrath, die Faggots!") to anarchy signs, flowery poetry, and militant feminist declamations: "Have a nice day rapists: because CASTRATION IS COMING SOON TO YOU." Sexual graffiti abounds. It's hard to see what anyone could find arousing about a hot, dark tunnel that throbs with the sound of machinery, but there's more here than in a stall at the YMCA. There's propositions ("If you want your Dick sucked to the limit please call me afternoons or evenings @ 267-9667"), astute observations ("DIKES SUCK, HOMOS TAKE IT UP THE ANUS") and narratives that would make a QA chalk-jockey blush ("I love my cock covered in a spermy/K.Y./Shitty mix. Make 'em lick it clean!"). The colorful walls have an artistic component: rants, murals, and even long stories scribbled around campus in installments. El Wes, "International Crusader for freedom, justice, and cheap thrills," enjoys celebrity status under WestCo, while Tim and his Cat prowl the Butterfield tunnels. There's a utilitarian component too: lost and found messages, directions scribbled on the pipes in the maintenance-corridors under college row and coded advice like the rhyme printed in the telephone nexus under Foss 2: "Roses are red, boxes are BLUE, now you can make phone calls without paying you-know-who!" Graffiti Call: Nicolson: Skinhead for Skinhead, not skinhead for racism. A woman without a man is a Happy Woman Consider this: Man is used by DNA to make more DNA! Pattie Hearst is Alive and hiding on this campus. WestCo: If you deal Crack or Crystal Meth, Go Away, Only Gentle Trippers Allowed here. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters If you want your dick sucked to the limit please call me afternoons or evenings @ 267-9667 Murder is a crime, but writing about it isn't. Sex isn't a crime, but writing about it is. Post-Thrill Nuke Freaks Looking for a Kick! Post-Thrill Nike Kicks Looking for a Freak! Idle Wealthy Brats Looking for a Fix. Work hard, trust in God, + keep your bowels open. -Oliver Cromwell Attention 4/27/89 Lost 1 purple ankle sock, return to foss 222 (Stef) Reward! YOU CLOWNS HAVE ONE WEEK TO GET THESE TUNNEL WALLS SPOTLESS! I Shot Regan (sic) I've had it w/ reality-I want a fairy godmother. Butterfield: God is Dead -Nietzsche Nietzsche is Dead -God God + Nietzsche are both dead. -Norman Mailer God Never Lived, but Nietzsche is dead -John. I was just playing dead so Nietzsche would say things about me!! -God While mapping the tunnels, you'll slowly realize that the myths are wrong-you can't get anywhere on campus from anywhere else. It's true that there's some type of tunnel system attached to nearly every institutional building on campus-Wesleyan's architects seem to have had a romantic affair with narrow corridors and secret passages-but they don't all connect. The WestCo tunnels attach to Nicolson and nothing else. The Butterfield tunnels are self-contained. The CFA connects to the CFA, period. The tunnels under College Row connect to Olin, Clark, and the Science Center-they send pipes to other parts of campus, but those are the only buildings you can walk to. All the buildings in the CFA are attached underground, and that space is very much in use-it hosts scene shops, costume shops, dressing rooms, and other spaces. Also open are the somewhat gratuitous tunnels between buildings that are already pretty close together-the tunnel that connects the bottom of the Alumni Athletic Center to the basement of Fayerweather Gym, for instance. There's tunnels connecting the basement of the Science Center to Hall Atwater and Shanklin-they're open, they make a great place to play hide and go seek, but they don't seem to serve any pressing need. The ancient tunnels that connect all the old brownstones to Olin and the Science Center were never intended as anything more than maintenance corridors. They're barely tall enough to walk in, they're crowded by hot asbestos-wrapped pipes, and the floor tends to collect water when it's raining. These are easily the spookiest tunnels at Wesleyan. The wall sized confession under Olin- "I DID IT ALL The office, the boathouse; the shootings; and Malcolm X. -Haddad 1990."-doesn't help any. The College Row tunnels also win the "Where the hell am I now?" award-you can wander into the basement of the Science Center and come out of a manhole in Andrus Field; you could go down through Clark, trip the alarms in Olin, and then come out next to Public Safety in the basement of North College. Probably the highest-profile tunnels on campus are those under WestCo and the Butterfield Complex. Both were intended for student use when they were built. There's access from the bottom of every stairwell in those dorms, though most sections were locked off because of safety concerns. Opportunistic students invaded, graffittied the walls, floor, and ceiling, and made the tunnels the stuff of legends. The halls of the Butterfield Tunnels, sectioned off by locking steel wire gates (in keeping with the riot-proof dorm model), are the more extensive of the two. They're also in better shape-sections still play host to working laundry rooms, offices, meeting rooms, and the Kosher Kitchen. The halls in use are clean, well-lit, and graffiti-free. The WestCo tunnels are wetter, funkier, and have better graffiti-they're completely locked off except for the WestCo Cafe. WEShop uses a section of the tunnels under Foss 2 for loading and storage. Four years ago two students broke into the Ben and Jerry's freezer in the tunnels and bagged a two weeks' supply-a two weeks' supply for the entire campus. They walked the halls of WestCo throwing six-pint packs of ice cream in every open door. As for the mythical tunnel to the Connecticut River-Hermes researchers have been unable to verify or disprove this legend, but we can flesh out its foundations: before the civil war, the underground railroad ran through this corner of Middletown (thus the 'Freedom Trail' signs on route 66), and the going story is that the Russell Family had a tunnel to shuttle fugitive slaves from the basement of what is now Russell House to boats headed north on the Connecticut River. Some claim that the tunnel may also have been used in the opium trade, which is where the family made its fortune, and where a considerable chunk of our endowment comes from. Sources claim the tunnel is partially collapsed. We can only assume that if there were tunnel access to the Connecticut River from Russell house, most of it would be through Middletown's storm drains. We do know this: In the basement of Russell House there is a large metal door built into an exterior wall facing east that has no fewer than four locks on it. What'll you find down in the tunnels? The tunnels under the dorms are mostly used for storage these days. Wesleyan has a pathological fear of throwing anything out. There's rooms stacked to the ceiling with ancient files-transcripts of students who graduated fifty years ago, memos from departments that no longer exist, early mimeographed versions of the Blue Book, hundred-year-old annual reports on swine plague from the National Department of Agriculture. Physical Plant maintains several graveyards for furniture that is either broken or non-standard-i.e. desks and bookshelves that students brought to campus and then left in their rooms at the end of the year. Under Butterfield B, there's a room with nothing but piles of ancient twelve-line receptionist phones that don't work. Some are labeled "no ringer;" some are labeled "no dialtone;" some are lying in pieces on the floor. There's a number of retired student storage rooms-spaces like those currently in use under Nicolson. Every few years Physical Plant gives birth to a new one by changing the locks on the doors to a large, empty room in the tunnels. Students stash extra books and clothing, lamps and office supplies in these rooms at the end of the year. As often as not, they never come back for them. Physical Plant wouldn't presume to remove student affairs left in their care, so over a period of years the orphaned typewriters, carpets, fire-hazards and mini-fridges eat up all the space. At that point there's nothing to do but move on. In a few years students figure out a way to get into the room-the clothing has become trendily retro, the appliances still work, and the books are still on syllabi. After the room has been suitably plundered and the students have turned what was once orderly storage into a knee-deep mess of ripped-apart cardboard boxes, Physical Plant finally throws everything out, replaces the mangled lock on the door, and starts over again. Another thing you'll find in the tunnels is the abandoned shells of dead programs and student spaces. Signs on rooms under Butterfield (some painted over) announce facilities it's hard to imagine these days: "Game Room," "Pottery Studio," "Ceramics." Yes, Wesleyan used to have a Ceramics major. WestCo used to have a laundry room under Foss 4 (instead of taking up half its lounge). The Butterfield dorms used to have kitchens in their basements-now they just have locked rooms with wood cabinets, broken stoves, and 40-year-old mammoth refrigerators. Shake your head and mutter 'what a waste' under your breath as you pocket your lockpicks and move on. Stranger still, you'll sometimes find relics of Wesleyan's Natural History Museum. Back when the sciences were more oriented toward itemizing and cataloguing the works of nature, all of Judd Hall was home to an extensive collection of Triassic fossil fish, stuffed marsupials, exotic mineral formations, and archeological treasures plundered from tombs by former professors (a la Indiana-Jones). When the museum was shut down in 1957, the collections were stashed in "temporary" storage locations around campus-often unlabeled-and forgotten. Many of them wound up in the tunnels. Under WestCo there's a room with a metal desk full of pre-historic shells and plaster casts of dinosaur vertebrae. Somewhere under Butterfield C, there's crates of Mica and Pyrite next to stacks of 30-year-old teacher evaluation forms. Most students take home the smaller things they find and play pranks with the larger ones-in the 1970s a stuffed camel appeared in Olin library; a few years later a frosh found an Egyptian mummy lying in his bed. If you come across something that looks like it's from the museum in the tunnels give a call to Prof. Carla Antonnacccio. She's been restoring artifacts and piecing the collections back together for years. El Wes: El Wes is a character whose life story is recorded in installments around the WestCo Tunnels. Many of these entries have been at least partially painted over, but Hermes researchers managed to recover a couple passages intact: EL WES lit up a Lucky Strike without asking and looked at his boss. Oscar Goldman, he knew, was still furious that he had lost his old government job the "The 6 Million Dollar Man" was canceled. But why, thought EL WES between puffs, had the aging Jewish spy come to work here, at Amnesty International? He hadn't even known that the organization dabbled in espionage at all until they had recruited him out of his small, frighteningly insulated liberal Arts Career and started sending him around the world to free political prisoners. It was dangerous but they paid well, and the benefits were good. "Here," said Oscar, handing El Wes the mirror. "This is to celebrate your success in Uganda. Try not to Hoover it all this time." El Wes grinned, it was fun to be a mercenary sometimes. The corpse of the Chilean torture-master was still twitching as El Wes freed the prisoner-of-conscience from his bonds and helped him to his feet. "Dammit," he muttered. "What's wrong?" asked the prisoner. "The bastard bled all over my new suit," said El Wes, and he gave the corpse a heavy kick with a black and white leather golf shoe. Once aboard El Wes' yacht (service issue), the prisoner-of-conscience fell asleep out of exhaustion and relief. El Wes sat and chain-smoked on the foredeck. Hell's bells, he thought, how much longer can I do this alone? No amount of speed can keep me on this schedule. He took a gulp from a scotch + soda and stared out to sea. There must be an answer, must be some way that I can keep crusading for freedom, justice, and inexpensive drugs." He looked down at his hopelessly stained Zoot suit and cursed the Chilean guard's impropriety again. Then it came to him All at once, like a thunderbolt from Olympus. The rush hit his head like a fine dose of LSD and he had his answer . . . A sidekick, he would find a sidekick. Why the hell not?-Batman had one. El Wes knew he too must find a youthful ward. But Who? Defining what constitutes "the tunnels" at Wesleyan is difficult. They're more than the sum of the subterranean passages on campus. Ask students the first thing that comes to mind when you say 'tunnels' and they'd probably name the graffiti-covered hallways under WestCo and the Butterfields, even if some of them used the corridors under the CFA every day. They might agree that there's an open tunnel from the basement of the Science Center to Hall Atwater, but would deny that it's part of "the tunnels." They'd probably lump the maintenance shafts that connect College Row to Olin and the Science Center under "the tunnels," but they wouldn't claim to be tunneling when they walk the passage from the Alumni Athletic Center to Fayerweather. Strangely enough, some students consider the penthouse floor of the Science Center "the tunnels," even though it's the highest point in Middletown. For those who've walked between its hills of junked computers, used books, broken furniture, and thirty year old model kits, it's easy to see the connection to some of the abandoned storage rooms under Butterfield. There are a few defining characteristics. "The tunnels" are locked. Getting in makes you feel a little like a bad-ass. They're empty, unused. You know you won't be disturbed. They've been abandoned by the powers-that-be. You get the feeling that they belong to anybody-your claim is as good as anyone else's. They should be old, like a mausoleum. Being down there makes you feel like part of a Wesleyan that doesn't change. It's a simple irony that what puts the tunnels in the public domain is the fact that they're locked off. There's no authority attached to a space that's been abandoned. "You are the Rules" reads graffiti under Butterfield B. Even the homophobes and rapists feel free to express themselves. More than anyplace else on campus, they're student territory. University employees only go down to fix things and chase kids. Students spend far more time underground. They've claimed every square foot of wall space with slogans, tags, and bad poetry. It's almost a point of honor to keep as many doors unlocked (or locks disabled) as possible. If you can get down there at all, then the tunnels are open to you 24 hours a day-unlike every other student space on campus. It's not uncommon for students to carve out their own corner of the tunnels. Students have taken over party rooms, seance chambers, and band practice space. Under the chapel there's a brick room ringed with arm-chairs that looks like it's played host to more than one secret society. Under Butterfield C there's a room whose walls are painted entirely by one artist and dedicated to 'Tunnelarts.' And under Nicolson there's a room covered from wall to wall with foam mattresses, an armchair, and a lamp. Last year, public safety caught a girl from WestCo down there. She made a habit of going down there to practice music, had gone so far as to put her own lock on the room-she was so comfortable she'd was sleeping with her flute in hand when they found her. Two years ago an underground group called "The Art Terrorists" built a junkart studio in an abandoned room under Butterfield B-they set up counters, schlepped in abandoned televisions, broken stereo systems, tubing, wires, and hoses, and set to work. Soon they were bombing campus with sculptures that looked so good the ground screw didn't dismantle them for weeks. Students have re-opened spaces in the tunnels through semi-official channels as well. The student darkroom under Butterfield was closed for decades before four years of struggle re-opened it this semester. The WestCo Cafe, which was shut down after ARA took over campus dining services in the late 1980s, was resurrected five years ago by students who broke into it and started holding underground openmics and coffeehouses. Later it was officially opened and renovated. The tunnels may seem like a lawless frontier, but there are certain rules of etiquette. Try not to destroy things-as validating as it may feel to rip off a lock, it's a lot more challenging to pick it or work around it, and a lot less work for whoever has to fix it. By all means feel free to take things that look like they've just been left there to rot for all of eternity, but if there's any sign that they're actually in use, that's when 'liberation' crosses the line into plain old stealing. When you're rooting through dead storage, try not to leave a mess. Remember: no-one should ever know you were there (unless you feel like scrawling something on the wall). There's a certain amount of karmic justice involved: if you break a lock, they're going to put a bigger one on. If you steal their stuff (i.e. if you take tools from a Physical Plant repair room) then they're going to try to catch you. If you leave a place messy, and they have to clean up after you, they'll try keep you out of it in the future. Poor plundering etiquette equals less plundering. Three years ago you could take the service elevator up to the Science Center's penthouse floor. Plundering students left a big enough mess that Physical Plant put a key-lock on the elevator panel. When students found a way to get through the stairwell door and left an even bigger mess, the powers that be (read: the poor guy who had to clean up) changed the locks and posted a sign chiding the burglars, not for stealing, but for leaving a mess. He footnoted it with the remark that they were welcome to most of the contents of the room if they would go down to the machine shop during business hours and ask to be taken up there. Yes, Physical Plant should realize that every time they lock a door to something that doesn't really need to be locked off they're just creating a two-hour project for someone procrastinating on a paper. But students should remember that every lock they break and room they tear up will just make somebody's job harder, and probably make that room harder to get into in the future. A final rule of thumb: if anywhere in your journeys you come across a key, especially a key that says "Do Not Copy," DO NOT THROW IT AWAY. No matter how many years you've spent unsuccessfully sticking it into locks around campus, it's still worth something. If you can't think of anything better to do with it drop it by the Hermes office (in the WSA Building, 190 High St., upstairs)-we'll figure something out. At MIT, exploring the intricate tunnel system has become such a tradition that there's an official underground 'hacking community' that publishes its own guide to lockpicking (http://www.lysator.liu.se/mit-guide). They include a section on ethics, telling students how to hack responsibly. Here's their list of rules: Be SUBTLE - leave no evidence that you were ever there. (This is a general rule which applies to lots of circumstances - a few are enumerated explicitly in this list, but many principles follow from this simple edict) o Leave things as you found them (or better). o If you find something broken call F-IXIT (a local number for reporting problems with the buildings and grounds - Hackers often go places the normal institute workers do not frequent regularly and hence may see problems before the workers do). o Leave no damage. o Do not steal anything. o Brute force is the last resort of the incompetent. o Do not hack while under the influence of alcohol/drugs/etc. o Do not drop things (off a building w/out a ground crew). o Do not hack alone (just like swimming). o Exercise COMMON SENSE. (This is another general rule with very wide applicability - when exploring, you are often in places which were not intended for normal traffic. The people who built the area may not have assumed anyone would be there without special knowledge of the area. Many of the assumptions you are used to making are not valid or applicable while hacking. It is very important that you stay alert and think clearly.) More than anything else, these point out some of the glaring differences between MIT students and those at Wesleyan, but they also make a few good points. It doesn't hurt to pay a little respect to the space you're tunneling in.