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That expressway is part of our school. It is the twelfth man on our football team, providing at least half the roar at Fitton Field, however embarrassing that fact may be.
BROCKLESBY
THE FROSH
24 September ’99
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Opening the strange doors to Mulledy, he found in himself a new sort of courage, an adventurer's confidence to press on into unknown territory. As he paced the strange, neverending hallways, he made an important discovery about himself: he was lost.
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COMMENTS ON THE PASSING PARADE
It’s a Scary Life on the Hill
By Michael J. Ballway
CRUSADER FEATURES STAFF
L
ike many other Hanselmaniacs, Joey Brocklesby '03 has a deep-seated fear in him. The stress of attending "the Catholic Harvard" and the fear of failure isn't all that keeps him awake at night. Joey, like many Freshmen -- like many upperclassmen, even -- is downright terrified of some of the strange things here at Holy Cross. At the top of the list is Fenwick 5. It's the top floor of the campus' second-oldest building and it just seems ... creepy. Rumor has it that exorcisms were performed there, and that demonic spirits haunt its sealed-off hallways. Now, Joey wouldn't admit this to his girlfriend back home, but even visiting Fenwick 4 was enough to give him the willies. Granted, he was turning in a 12-page term paper two days late, but he tells me that at least 11% of his fear was demon-related. Then there's the I-290 overpass. During his infrequent forays into the city (he isn't really all that adventurous), Joey is forced, just like every other intrepid Crusader, to walk under that picturesque Interstate which just completes the pastoral New England vista that we have on the Hill. Joey claims that back when his father, James Brocklesby '67, attended school here, there wasn't any Interstate and motorists were expected to use, horror of horrors, Southbridge Street to get from the Mass. Pike to College Square. Not only did they not have a direct connection to the Pike, but apparently the students of James' time weren't in any rush to build one, either. Personally, I don't believe a word of that. What would Holy Cross be without its trademark freeway? Can you imaging looking out a Stein or Loyola window and not seeing the gasoline-powered march of humanity? An empty swath of land would ruin the view. That expressway is a part of our school. It is the twelfth man on our football team, providing at least half of the roar at Fitton Field (however embarrassing that fact may be). It is the reason why our Physical Plant employees take so much care in keeping our bushes pruned and our fences painted -- if the landscape of this campus were anything less than perfect, it would pale in comparison to Worcester's limited-access divided highway to heaven. Yet there is a spooky underside to the College Square overpass, and it's on the sidewalk. Joey told me over lunch about how nature is audacious enough to try to rear its head in the very focus of Man's creation. The College Square Rotary, which is neither a college nor a square but does seem to be some mutant form of rotary/onramp hybrid, is the shining star of human engineering achievement. Its perfection is marred, however, by the intrusion into man's domain of the Blackstone River, which is neither a stone nor a real river, but does appear to be black. This pathetic excuse for a creek bubbles along its meandering path past Rotman's and under Southbridge Street, emerging on the other side of the Interstate in a city park across McKeon Road from the school. Its feeble attempt at pastoral beauty provides nothing short of a mortal insult to the mathematical precision of Interstate 290. It disturbs and horrifies Joey greatly that such a weak mass of moving water should despoil the splendor that is the expressway. However, neither banshee nor brook can spook Joey quite the same way as Mulledy. As a card-carrying resident of Hanselman, Joey's going to have to move somewhere else next year -- probably somewhere on the Hill. He finds his gaze ever passing over the nondescript Clark ("Clarkwork Orange"? What's it built with, mortar and Kubricks?) and to the monster that dwarfs all the other Hill Dorms. The Mulledy mystique holds a strong sway over the underclassmen who have not yet braved Godzilla's jaws. While Hanselman welcomes its students every year with pageantry attendant to the First Year Program and banners with pithy slogans like "Gateway to Your Future," Mulledy goes full-bore with "Bigger is Better" and other boastful fare. Room numbers in Mulledy have letters in them -- what a concept! Residents of Lehy or Wheeler don't have to include "West Wing" in their on-campus address. Additionally, scuttlebutt in Hanselman has it that Mulledy inhabitants enjoy the luxury of -- brace yourself for it -- overhead lighting. Yes, overhead lighting. For a Mulledian who is used to such things as these, they may not be a big deal. But to Joey, in perpetual awe and intermittent fear of this Mt. St. James Sasquatch, they represent another facet of that inscrutable, yet strangely alluring, Mulledy culture. Then there's the sheer physical size of the thing. The other Hill dorms, in a gradual arc from Clark down to Healy, are essentially patterned on the same design with similar architectural features (in fact, Hanselman and Lehy are exact mirror images of each other; Joey tells me that his father used to call the latter "Gretelman." Remember, dear reader, that this is back when the campus population didn't see the need for an Interstate and that sort of joke probably seems funny to the type of people who don't appreciate a good freeway). Mulledy, the last of the Hill Dorms to be built, is a giant dorm-and-a-half with weird window patterns and strange concrete inserts into its brick facade. Its stern gaze looks over its four older sisters and its conference-hosting cousin, Hogan. Yet it truly is the little things about Mulledy that give it its aura of imposing individuality. It claims to have a "beach," although no water source is present (perhaps in days of yore there was a Blackstone Lake, now paved over for Easy Street or parking lot considerations. Maybe the Crusader should investigate that angle). It is the only Hill Dorm to have a satellite dish on its roof, fulfilling purposes unknown and confirming this writer's suspicion that the Holy Cross Department of Sociology is currently in communication with extraterrestrial life bent on destroying humanity through the assignment of 12-page papers. Despite the foreboding questions surrounding so many aspects of Mulledy existence, Joey, perhaps a little too "high on life" ("life," and some other substances as well), accepted a dare last Tuesday to brave the slush and wind and foray into the very heart of the beast. Opening the strange doors to that foreign dorm, he found in himself a new sort of courage, an adventurer's confidence to press on into unknown territory. As he paced the strange, neverending hallways, he made an important discovery about himself: he was lost. Lost in the basement of Mulledy. Like Charlie and his ill-fated ride on the T, Joey seemed fated to walk forever 'neath the halls of Mulledy. The ground floor, with its mammoth study room and labyrinthine hallways, is too big to describe in mere words. Joey, in his travels through these catacombs, claims to have charted vast lands that no man has ever seen before; met whole new tribes of native inhabitants; and, in his notebook, catalogued over twenty forms of life not presently found in our Biology textbooks. I told him to lay off the juice. We found Joey on Thursday. The kid was starving, since the candy machine down there wouldn't take his crumpled dollar-bill. We brought him down to Kimball, where we realized that we were feeding him his first meal in days -- and promptly carried him up to Crossroads for a more fitting triumphal feast for our reluctant explorer. Joey's still a little shaken up following his ordeal. He refuses to entertain the prospect of living in Mulledy next year. In fact, he's sworn off of Mulledy and -- this should show just how shaken up he was -- drinking as well. I told him that I had the perfect dorm idea for him: Loyola. "I like it," he said. "No distracting parties, nice suites ... and those lovely views of the Interstate." Portions of this article ran under the headline "Comments on the Passing Parade" on pages 12 and 15 (the second and fifth pages of Features section) in the 4 February 2000 edition of The Crusader. Readers were invited to "check out the Crusader web-site" for the "thrilling conclusion." |