interview with james e. tetazoo by Boheng C. '28

this year, i live in a dorm called east campus on a floor called tetazoo. when visitors from other dorms hear the name, they often ask where the word ‘tetazoo’ comes from. the answer is very simple — it comes from the name of our founder, james e. tetazoo.

yet no matter how many times we tell them, there’s always a few people who don’t seem to think this is true. despite all the documentation for the origins of our beloved hall’s name — evidence that has since made its way into websites and dusty annals across the country and even onto the wall of a particular staircase in a particular innovation corridor — visitors respond to our explanations with incredulous eyes. some people don’t even think that james e. tetazoo exists!

that’s why, for this blog post, i’ll finally be putting an end to this misguided controversy by interviewing james e. tetazoo themselves. after all, you certainly can’t interview someone who doesn’t exist!

welcome james! can you confirm that you’re the namesake for the third floor of the east parallel of east campus?

yes.

what was one memorable moment that you recall spending with tetazoo?

one weekend night a few years ago, i organized an event where we dragged all our cruft⁠01 discarded items like furniture, monitors, keyboards, and electronic appliances that we scavenge from the loading docks around campus into one of our lounges. we filled the room up with atari consoles, foam, neon plushies shaped like demons, and traffic cones, along with an old playground slide that we spent a long time shoving through the doorway. we all had a wonderful time together, talking and playing snakes and ladders until the sun was nearly up. 

one spring break, we also went on an outing up north to new hampshire and canada. we visited some waterfalls and ended up setting off some fireworks outside the parliament building in ottawa, before driving north for the rest of our time there, all the way until we reached the arctic circle. along the way, we got very cute turtle and big whale plushies, which still sit in our lounges, next to the hanging chalkboxes for our blackboard. 

what’s your favorite place to get food on campus?

on wednesdays, there’s almost always a taco truck parked in the outfinite⁠02 the main east-west outdoor corridor on campus. its name comes from the fact that it runs parallel to the infinite corridor (indoors) that i get lunch from. i will admit that it’s a strange taco truck though — it has eyes painted all over its outside, which sometimes even move by panning, tilting, and zooming. there’s also a lot of plants growing from the ceiling of the truck for some reason.

for a late-night snack, i’ll often go to the stud⁠03 student center and munch on the free ice cream cones and rice krispy treats there at any hour of the day, along with the free vending in the basement.

what’s your favorite spot on campus?

one time, my friend samara and i were wandering around the east side of campus, when we found a mysterious antique well nestled between two buildings. we decided to call it samara’s well.

have you had any fun adventures around the boston area?

one day, my friends and i heard rumors that there was an enormous towering spire not too far from campus. so we followed their instructions and headed over to chelsea, and lo and behold, there it stood, high up in the sky with long blades protruding from the top like knives. but then we noticed that there was a gatekeeper guarding the entrance at the bottom and blocking us from getting in, so there we were, a couple of lost explorers at the gatekeeper’s spire.

at some point during my junior year, we also found an abandoned tunnel near south end. it was quite a heaven for dust bunnies, since it’d been sitting unused for so many years at that point. we ended up wandering through some really big echoing cavernous spaces shaped like cathedrals, all connected together to form a sprawling fortress of solitude.

that night, when we exited the tunnel, we saw a dead raven on the ground nearby. we didn’t know if it was a bad omen or maybe something else, but either way we decided to bury it near its final resting place. i think the marker above the raven’s tomb is still there to this day.

what’s an interesting story that you’ve heard from your classmates here?

once, while i was standing in a dining hall line, i overheard a few people in front of me talking about how some of the neuroscience labs in oscorp would put monkeys in electrocution chambers, and how they would euthanize them afterwards and put them in monkey incinerators. i didn’t really know what to make of it, but to me it just sounded like one of those old ludicrous tales that the campus tour guides would always spin, usually when they have to stay in one place for longer than they thought they had to. 

what was your favorite class at MIT?

my favorite class was actually 18.01 (single-variable calculus), one of the first classes i took here, taught by professor victor. i was sick for a lot of freshman fall and spent most of the semester in turmoil, so i had to watch the lecture recordings in my roommate harry’s bedroom, but there was a very cool moment in one of the lectures when we derived the volume formulas for a sphere, a cylinder, pyramids, and a tent. it was so illuminating seeing where all those middle school geometry formulas came from and how you could just derive them from a few basic facts. in that very moment it was like a door had been opened for me through integration. 

one final question: since CPW is coming up soon, are you planning to run any events?

a lot of people think that i must be old and wizened and tired of running events since i’ve been around for so long. but i’m not retired yet! i’ll be running apple tours, an event where we hide a lot of apples in very hidden places around campus and let the prefrosh search for them. i’ll serve as the eyes for the tour, meaning that i’ll scout along the way to make sure that everything goes as planned. 

and if everything goes well, i’m planning to do this for as long as MIT is around. because, after all, there’ll always be places to wander, to get lost, to explore and see and dream about.

editor’s note: happy april fools! some of you might not understand what this blog means, or what it’s trying to say. but maybe, if you come to MIT and go to strange, miraculous places and follow strange, miraculous signs, perhaps you’ll understand. one day.

and isn’t discovering part of the fun?