a love letter to McCormick by Hala K. '29

As I think about coming back for this school year,⁠01 for context, i wrote this part before i got back to campus... sorry for the delay I can’t help but realize that my daily routine will look a little different. When I step out of the Great Dome after classes, I’ll walk straight toward the Student Center instead of taking my usual left toward Maseeh. My amazon packages and doordash deliveries will need to be addressed to Vassar Street rather than Memorial Drive. Visiting most of my closest friends will no longer mean simply taking an elevator down a few floors but instead walking across Briggs field. And every time I walk down dorm row, I’ll have to walk past my favorite building on campus – with renovation signs staring back at me.

For the next 2 years, McCormick Hall – MIT’s only all-female residence – will be closing for renovation… and I’m devastated. It’s hard to put all of my thoughts in a single blog but this is an attempt at it:

some context on McCormick:

It’d be crazy to write a blog about McCormick without a quick history lesson. All of the information here is sourced from McCormick’s history page – extra shoutout to the amazing essay by alumni Tara Venkatadri included in this page. 

McCormick was started by Katharine McCormick in an effort to show that women belong in scientific fields and by extension, at MIT. In 1963, McCormick’s west tower⁠02 t</span>his means that my own freshman year dorm room at MIT (in West tower (best tower)) was shared by some of the first set of women students at MIT. WHICH IS CRAZY. opened. By the next year, the number of female applicants to MIT had doubled. However, with the building filled to capacity, MIT’s administration argued that it would once again have to be more selective in admitting women because there was no longer sufficient housing for them. Katharine McCormick responded by providing another donation, leading to the opening of McCormick’s East Tower.

While I realize that some level of systemic gender inequality still exists at MIT – and, I’d argue, at any university – the opening of McCormick COMPLETELY changed what it looked like to be a woman here. And looking back at that history is crazy to me. 

My experience at MIT has never felt like a constant effort to prove myself against my male peers, nor have I felt that women feel forced to create a community among themselves in order to survive. Most of my classes, even the CS-focused ones, tend to have a pretty even gender split. And now, women can live in any MIT dorm they want. Some choose McCormick for women-only accommodations, others like the tight-knit community, and some were placed here by accident and fell in love with it.

my first impressions of McCormick:

My older sister is a former McCormick president and its number one cheerleader, so the decision to choose McCormick came pretty easily. Still, like most freshmen, I worried that I had made the wrong choice. 

That feeling lasted about five minutes into orientation.

I had barely started pulling my luggage out of my Uber when I heard someone yell, “KOMAIHA!” Confused, I looked up to see Raul and Flavia, McCormick’s Heads of House, waiting outside. They welcomed me like they had been expecting me all day, telling me how excited they were to have me, and how great the year was going to be. Then another car pulled up, and they immediately called out the next freshman’s name too.

I realized that they had memorized all of our names before we had even arrived. It seems like a small thing, but on a stressful day where everyone and everything is unfamiliar, being greeted by name means a lot. Looking back now, it was also a pretty fitting introduction to McCormick: a community that cares enough to dedicate a week memorizing photos of prefrosh just to make them feel at home on their first day. 

pre-frosh hala on move in day with Raul and Flavia 🥲

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McCormick community + staple events:

With only 255 residents, the second-smallest dorm after Random, McCormick is an extremely tight-knit community. I would guess that I’ve had at least one conversation with 80% of McCormick residents. And when I tell friends in other dorms that, they’re usually shocked. In a lot of dorms⁠03 </span>TOTALLY feel free to disagree with me here , you become close with the people on your floor, plus a handful of others you meet at dinner or in the laundry room. I’ve never felt like those same “boundaries” exist at McCormick – in large part due to the fact that we don’t have floor culture, only dorm-wide culture. 

Though I think another reason for this is because of how many McCormick traditions bring the entire dorm together. There are basically unskippable⁠04 </span>as in they're super fun, not that you are actually required to go events happening almost every other week, organized by different chairs, presidents, and our AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING house team. At these events, you end up meeting a lot of people that live across every corner of the building. And over time, those repeated interactions make the whole building feel much smaller. Here are some of the most popular ones:

KARAO-CAKE! just like the name says, karaoke + cheesecake in the HOH apartment. easily the most iconic event ever.

BARBEQUE! this is an event held monthly by the McCormick house team + dining staff. amazing barbeque (that is 100% halal) and lots of fruits/desserts.

CHURRO DAY! another collab with house staff and McCormick dining. typical breakfast is replaced with homemade churros (THAT ARE TO DIE FOR) and sandwiches.

PASTA NIGHT! during IAP, most students opt out of a dining plan and cook for themselves. About once a week, McCormick runs a pasta making session where the entire dorm is invited to help cook or even just grab some pasta to go! i unfortunately don't have good pictures but these were leftovers from one day!

PIZZA NIGHT! (so many food based traditions) all residents are invited to make their own pizza with a HUGE variety of toppings in the HOHs brick oven. to this day, one of the best pizzas I've ever had

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But of course, the people are what make McCormick most special.⁠05 i know, pretty philosophical I talked about first impressions earlier, but the effort people put in on that first day to make you feel welcome stays consistent throughout your time here. Residents ask about your day in the elevator, GRAs remember your hometown and ask how moving in has been, and Raul and Flavia will invite you to sit with them at dinner just to hear about what you’re excited or worried about. During my first week at MIT, upperclassmen I had only briefly met while moving in invited me to join them for breakfast, probably realizing that I hadn’t made enough friends yet to have plans of my own. And somehow, it didn’t feel awkward or like I was butting in at ALL.

As someone who often felt homesick freshman year, this always reminded me that I had people here looking out for me too.

Another one of my favorite examples of that is McC-Fast, a weekly event held in McCormick’s Green Living Room. McCormick residents volunteer to tutor other residents, often freshmen, in classes they’ve already taken. For students whose schedules are already incredibly busy, choosing to spend two hours every week helping someone else is so selfless. During my first semester, my friends and I went almost every week for help with our 8.01 psets. Obviously, it helped me understand physics, but it also introduced me to other students in the dorm who later became close friends and pset buddies in completely different classes. I still haven’t heard of another dorm that runs anything quite like it.

Though my opinion alone might not mean much, so I asked some friends for words they associate with McCormick. They said wholesome, close-knit, toasty, girlhood, and slumber party. For me, the first word that comes to mind is homey. Maybe some of that is the slightly old-fashioned look of the building, but there’s something about McCormick that just feels comfortable the moment you walk in. 

thoughts on renovation

Visuals of how McCormick should look after renovations and specifics of what will be changed are shared here. 

Transparently, I worry that post-renovation McCormick will feel a little different. You know how time is divided into BC and AD? I’ve already started describing things as BR and AR: “before renovations” and “after renovations.” 

Some of the worry is purely derived from the physical changes. I can definitely admit that McCormick needs renovations, but I question if the “new look” will fit the dorm’s vibe. Will I still say that McCormick feels “comfortable the moment you walk in?” I remember seeing the proposed images for the new lobby and thinking that it looked a little too much like a hotel… like it was too polished.

That being said, student leadership has worked extensively with Housing and Residential Services to prioritize the things we really don’t want to lose. McCormick, for example, has these beautiful paintings scattered throughout the dorm, and a lot of them have been saved so they can go right back up AR. Students will be choosing the new furniture for the two main, communal living rooms. 

With that, most of my worry is actually about cultural preservation. Two years from now, I’ll be a senior, which means that by the time renovations are done, I’ll be one of very few residents who actually experienced both BR and AR. I feel some responsibility to make sure the traditions of McCormick and core cultural traits carry over. Enough so that the three classes of students who will move in having never lived there before still feel that same welcoming spirit I’ve kept coming back to throughout this blog. Enough so that they’re excited to show up for events, become part of the community, and eventually be the ones running those events for the next group of residents.

moving forward

Though with all of these concerns, I’m also REALLY excited. After renovations, I hope that the West Tower elevator will no longer randomly break, forcing me to walk up seven flights of stairs after an already long day. I hope the lighting fixtures are replaced so I don’t have to go to the bathroom anytime I want to see what my outfit looks like under non-yellow light. I hope that the game room projector actually works so I can watch Hamilton with friends without spending two hours fixing the machine first.

And in the meantime, McCormick won’t simply “disappear” for the next two years. House + student leadership have put in a lot of work to make sure there still exists women-only spaces like the ones McCormick used to provide, and that residents can still come together for the important traditions. 

Here are some of the really cool things they’ve already arranged for:

• Tang Hall, a graduate residence, has allocated two floors for women-only housing for students who require or simply prefer to live only with women. McCormick’s area director also lives here as a supportive resource for undergrads living there. 
• There’s a women-only gym in Tang with a huge variety of machines!
• McCormick has its own lounge in the basement of Stud where current residents and interested future residents can study, hang out, and run events. Residents are actively working to make the space feel homier, but it already has a lot of things from our old craft room – like the 3D printer and sewing machine – plus furniture that used to be in McCormick.
• McCormick dining used to be 100% halal, which was really nice for me as a Muslim student on campus. Because of that, Maseeh now has a halal dining section that only serves halal food and takes cross-contamination into account.
• A lot of the iconic events I talked about earlier are coming back. McC-Fast, for example, now happens every Sunday and Wednesday from 7–9 PM in the McCormick Lounge (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND ANY FRESHMAN READING THIS TO ATTEND!!!), and Karao-cake is happening this week!

As I write this part of the blog, I’ve been living in New Vassar for a few weeks. I really like my room and a lot of the amenities here (AC, large lounge areas for each section, a good dining hall, etc.). New Vassar was also super accommodating to displaced McCormick residents and created a women-only section for us. That means a lot of my neighbors are former McCormick residents and familiar faces.

But I think, in a lot of ways, this blog has already proved itself right: I really do miss McCormick. My friends and I wanted different things from housing this year, so we mostly split between Tang, New Vassar, and Simmons. Now, seeing each other takes more effort. I don’t just happen to run into someone at dinner or walk downstairs and find half my friends sitting in the same room.

So yes, I’m excited to move back into McCormick AR. I hope the building feels newer, but that the parts that made me fall in love with it still feel exactly the same. And I hope that, after reading all of this, you’ve fallen a little in love with McCormick too. If you end up at MIT or already go here, I hope that I’ll get to welcome you as a future neighbor and scream Taylor Swift with you at Karao-cake.