Fourth floor boys bond

By Micah Farver

The door to the dorm room burst open, and Justin Schecker was bombarded by flying tapioca balls. Yelling, he rolled off his bed and ducked for cover, waiting for the assault to end before charging back at his assailants.

Propelling balls of pudding through straws was just one of the many activities that transpired on the fourth floor of Jones Residential College, the male alcove of the cherub program. 

“Anytime you stick 20 teenage guys together from all over the country, it’s going to be a crazy situation,” said Schecker, a cherub from Silver Spring, Md. “But it’s all good fun.”

During down time, most of the boys chose to hang out in the common rooms rather then the comfort of their rooms. Poker games often took center stage, while spirited discussions and leisurely shoot-arounds on the mini basketball hoop were also commonplace.

Click here to hear a podcast on useful tips on surviving five weeks with a roommate. Producer Gabe Debenedetti.

Austin Shapiro (back left), Justin Schecker (front), and Gabe Debenedetti hang out on the fourth floor.

“Chilling, listening to music, playing poker: it was the life,” said Ross Lipshultz, a cherub from Los Angeles.

Fellow cherub Grady Page, a Washington D.C. native, was grateful for the small number of boys, as it allowed the fourth floor to form its own community.

“We were much more together than the other floors because we were the only boys,”Page said. “We all hung out together; we didn’t have individual cliques, we all were a clique.”

A general love of sports played a role in uniting the boys, said cherub Jeff Scholl from Bethesda, Md. According to Scholl, sports were the main topic of conversation on the first day, and the cherubs eventually took part in a fantasy football draft at Fisk, a draft that carried over to the fourth floor.

“I definitely think the draft was a bonding experience,” Scholl said. “Everyone thought they had drafted the best team, it made for some good arguments.”

The boys also created an “on notice” board with which to satirize people, places, and things. Austin Shapiro, the inventor of the board, said he got the idea from Steven Colbert.

“During the first week, there were several things that made me angry, and I thought about the Colbert Report when he puts things on notice,” said Shapiro, who lives in Dexter, Mich. “And I thought to myself: ‘Wait, I should put things on notice’.”

The “on notice” board became a staple of the fourth floor, said Seattle native Maddie Boardman.

“Early on, it was always intimidating for us girls to go to the fourth floor because you never knew what to expect,” Boardman said. “But the on notice board helped give you the courage to go up there. It was always exciting to see who was on notice and why.”

Amid the arguments, stories, insults, tapioca wars, and constant banter, Gabe Debenedetti of Princeton, N.J., said that the fourth floor became something special.

“There were only 20 of us, so we had to make it work somehow,” he said. “I’d say we did a pretty good job.”