Our fair campus is home to many fine dorms, but there is one in particular around which legends swirl like the autumn leaves, viewed as a kind of paradise lost for college students - Butterfield.
Many stories are told about that dorm. Stories of how it had it's own meal plan and dining hall that was a front for drug selling, how it was discovered when it made more money than all other student businesses combined, how all who lived there were so different from the rest of the school and how the dorm seceded from UMass once. All these legendary stories took place in the 1970s.
Though it's a cliché, it's true that all legends have a basis in fact. Solving the mystery of Butterfield, revealing the dorm behind the paradise and whatever perfidious fate that caused its downfall all must have had some basis in truth. The story about Butterfield that interested me the most was of its secession. I mean, that's not a usual political activity even for this campus. Not to mention, how was it possible, or permitted by the administration?
Through UMasswiki.com, I was able to track down the man who was there from the beginning - Marc J. Randazza, First Amendment lawyer and adjunct professor at the Barry University School of Law. Professor Randazza was enormously helpful. I owe this column to him. His story was simple. Back in the days when George H. W. Bush was president, Butterfield had no house council, so the residents half-seriously decided to make one. Professor Randazza was elected president of the council, a throne was made out of a La-Z-Boy chair and he was invested with a Burger King crown.
One of his friends climbed to the roof and hoisted a pirate flag over the building. Area Coordinator Matt Ouelette turned it into an incident by having the flag removed by a crew with a cherry picker. The next night during a rainstorm, Randazza and a few friends climbed the roof with a new flag and hoisted it on the shortwave radio antenna. Later, because the housing office's authority ultimately descends from the government, the Butterfield House Council declared independence; not only from the school, but also from Massachusetts and the United States.
This was accomplished by sending then-president Bush a letter which never received a reply. Randazza maintains that his failure to answer the letter means that the secession was recognized and is legal. He even offered the US embassy space with Canada in the basement. Randazza also purchased a Scottish lairdship through a magazine ad, so each successive house council president has been a member of Scottish nobility.
That's the story of Butterfield's secession, but what were the reasons behind it? Was it just a prank the administration took seriously? In Professor Randazza's eyes, it was both a joke and a protest. At the time, Butterfield was not taken seriously by the Student Government Association, the administration or housing, which Randazza describes as "self-important" and "far-left leaning" who didn't like anyone challenging their authority. When housing pushed Butterfield, the residents reacted like the college students they were and went out of their way to give the middle finger to the administration.
Housing never liked Butterfield. It's still the smallest dorm on campus. At that time, it had its own kitchen and meal plan. The residents lived together and, more importantly, they ate together. So, the relationships between the residents grew to resemble a family rather than the artificial community spirit attempted by the dorms today. They were crazy in Butterfield, but not fraternity house insane. People walked down halls smoking pot in the nude, but no one was ever unsafe. If anyone ever was threatened, the family banded together for protection - as Randazza said, "violent hippies with Frisbees [are] a force to be reckoned with."
As housing and the administration became more Draconian towards the dorm, things changed for the worse. UMass magazine relates the story of a couple of students who attempted to set fire to a sofa in a hallway. But when you think about it, it's the way 19-year-olds would react when not treated with respect. Housing also killed Butterfield by closing the kitchen. It became freshman-only housing, long-time residents were kicked out, and the building was renovated. Sic transit gloria mundi.
There are lessons that can be learned from Butterfield. A heavy-handed attitude can provoke much behavior authority does not tolerate. Most importantly, it betrays a good deal of hypocrisy on the part of the college administrators around the country.
Community has been a buzzword used to justify many things over the years. Events are planned to build community, but here in Butterfield they had more than a community - they had a family. That family was not the university's idyllic notion of a family, nor was it constructed on their terms. So, it had to be destroyed. That's the way of all authority. They'll give an inch, but fight for the mile.
Long live Butterfield.
Matthew M. Robare is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at morobare@student.umass.edu.
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