Riot Proof Hallways

The hallways of Mather and McBride residence halls were designed to be "riot proof."

Anyone who has ever walked through one of these north campus dorms, finished in 1969, would probably have an easy time believing that the multiple twists of the hallways—it takes seven sharp turns to navigate from one end to the open middle—were designed with some greater purpose in mind other than, say, making sleepwalking difficult.

And they were. Just not for the purpose that is mostly taken as gospel.

"Is that not true?" said Liz Jacobs '12, when informed that the design of her residence (McBride) was not intended to keep her in line.

"I explained that to prospective students," she said. "That's embarrassing."

Adam Sendor '11 was also surprised to hear the riot rumor busted.

"Isn't that true?" he said, as if being told the sky was not blue.

"I was told that on my tour," he said, trying to accept that he could not, in fact, believe everything he hears.

Sarah Bush '12, a McBride resident last year, was fond of jumping out from her dorm's many corners and scaring the academia right out of her pals. She scoffed at more traditional designs. "The hallways in Lewis and Norton are creepy; you can see all the way from one end to the other," she said with a slight (facetious) shudder.

"If someone were chasing you, there'd be nowhere to hide."

While Bush makes an interesting safety-first argument for the serpentine corridors, the actual reasoning behind the design is much more warm and fuzzy.

The bends are meant to create a sense of community at each turn.

Ken Rohlfing, principal at the Chicago office of Perkins + Will, the architecture firm that designed the buildings as well as Caples and Gund Commons, took one look at the designs and said the building clearly was not riot proof.

Instead, the kinks in the halls are meant to define "neighborhoods" of nine dorm rooms, a strategy to "humanize" a large dorm building, as Rohlfing put it.

"If you break [the dorm] down into smaller groupings or neighborhoods, you have an affinity for that group ... I think that what they were trying to do is make it more intimate," he said.

No doubt the charged atmosphere on campuses across the country in the late sixties and early seventies helped fuel this legend. But for the record, Rohlfing said that while buildings can be constructed to protect against window breakage, there's no such thing as "riot proof." Future inhabitants of Mather and McBride should not read that as a challenge.

The myth of riot-proof dorms exists on so many college campuses, by the way, that this legend has received national comeuppance on Snopes.com.