Every incoming University of Miami freshmen must either pledge their allegiance to the studious kingdom of Stanford where they will be surrounded by intellectual nerds who do nothing but study or the wild land of Hecht which is home to drunken hedonists.
Just kidding. Their identical (and quite ugly) pairs of towers that house the majority of the school's freshmen, but apparently campus lore dictates that each has its own distinct culture despite being a minute walk from each other.
The Miami Hurricane, the school's student newspaper, polled the incoming class of 2017 and found that 65 percent say they've heard about the reputation beforehand of each dorm residential college (the fancy name UM gives its dorms because a small handful of professors live in apartments on the first floor).
"I heard that in Hecht most of the kids partied and stuff like that, but Stanford was more of a sober dorm," incoming frosh William Cafero told the paper. "That's what people were saying before I came here, like random kids, Facebook things."
The odd thing is, he actually might be kind of right.
During the 2011-12 school year, Hecht students racked up a total of 237 disciplinary violations. Stanford herds only received 177. In 2010-11, Hecht raged to 456 violations compared to just 231 for Stanford.
Administrators think the reputations persist because students pass them down online. Curious incoming kids might find Facebook or message board postings explaining the dorms' different reps. And because students can check off which dorm they want when applying for housing, the kids who naturally want to party tend towards Hecht, while the ones who want to study gravitate to Stanford. So if anything, the dorms' reps have become sort of a continually self-fulfilling prophecy.
Personally, I was the asshole who checked off Eaton as my first choice because it had much bigger rooms and semi-private bathrooms and actually got in. Turned out to be a mistake living in a dorm full of upperclassmen who hadn't moved off campus yet. Let's just say the party scene in that place made Stanford look like a Hecht and a half, if you know what I'm saying.
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