House System at the California Institute of Technology
The House System is the basis of undergraduate student residence at the California Institute of Technology. Caltech's unique House system is modeled after the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge in England, although the houses are probably more similar in size and character to the Yale University residential colleges and Harvard University house system. Like a residential college, a House embodies two closely connected concepts; it serves as both a physical building where a majority of its members reside and as the center of social activity for its members.
The Houses resemble fraternities at other American universities in the shared loyalties they engender. Unlike in fraternities, however, potentially dangerous "rushing" or "pledging" is replaced with two weeks of "rotation" at the beginning of a student's freshman year, and students generally remain affiliated with one House for the duration of their undergraduate studies.
Freshmen have historically gone through a process known as Rotation for a week before term through the first week of classes, leading to their eventual House assignment by way of a matching process. This process has rules associated with it to try to give freshmen a chance to choose among the Houses in an unbiased way. These rules are located on .
History
Caltech established the House System in 1931, disbanding the existing fraternities and recasting them as Blacker House, Dabney House, Fleming House and Ricketts House, now known as the South Houses. The fraternities were as follows:- Blacker: Phi Alpha Rho, also known as Pharo
- Dabney: Gamma Sigma
- Fleming: Sigma Alpha Pi and Pi Alpha Tau
- Ricketts: Kappa Gamma, also known as Gnome
A new state-of-the-art residential facility named Avery House, was opened in 1996, touted as a facility that allowed undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty to not only mingle, but live together. As a result, Avery was not initially considered part of the House System, and freshmen were not allowed to live there. In the 2003-2004 school year, the Avery Council campaigned for Avery to participate in Rotation and take freshmen. This change was opposed by the Caltech undergraduate student body by a five-to-one margin, but the Faculty Board voted overwhelmingly to approve the change. Beginning in the 2005-2006 school year, freshmen began to rotate into Avery, changing its status to a fully represented House.
Also in 2005, work began on a major renovation project for the aging South Houses, whose residents were relocated to a temporary modular housing complex. The renovations were completed at the beginning of the 2007 calendar year. Students moved back into the South Houses on 15 December 2006, though construction continued through the beginning of 2007.
Like most of the older buildings on campus, Avery House and the South Houses are in California Mission style, and resemble cloistered monasteries with enclosed courtyards; the North Houses are of Modern design.
House memberships
There are two ways to gain membership in a House: Rotate in at the beginning of one's freshman year and become a full member, or become a social or full member afterwards. Procedures for admitting new members vary depending upon House bylaws and type of membership.Rotation
Rotation is the process by which incoming freshmen choose the House they will be affiliated with. In Caltech parlance, freshmen are called "frosh" and are referred to as "prefrosh" until the revelation of their house affiliation at the end of Rotation. Upon first arriving at Caltech, the incoming freshmen are given a random room assignment in a random House that is different from their Prefrosh Weekend assignment, and then spend a week eating mainly dinner and dessert in all of the Houses, getting an opportunity to meet people in all of the Houses.These meals and meetings are an opportunity both for the prefrosh to get to know the feel of the different houses and for the upperclassmen to meet and rate the prefrosh so both can see where they might belong. Many Houses also show house-made videos to the prefrosh, which yield the prefrosh additional information about the various personalities of the Houses. At the end of this week, the frosh rate each of the 8 Houses in order of preference. Based on this, and the opinions of the Houses' existing members, the prefrosh are placed into a House which will be their home physically and socially for the next few years. The InterHouse Committee attempts to ensure a certain level of secrecy regarding the exact process, so that the confidentiality of both the freshmen, and those involved with their final housing assignments, is maintained. Also, the selection process is constrained: there are only a limited number of openings in each House, and it is impossible to simultaneously meet the preferences of all of the Freshmen and Houses.
Despite the constraints, this two-way selection process of joining a House, and social interaction after joining, gives each House a distinctive personality that is stable over decades.
Later membership
There is a second way to obtain membership in a House: to apply at some point after Rotation. The process varies from House to House, but in general one makes an announcement at dinner to the effect of "I would like to be a member of Booty House," and the House conducts a vote. All Houses except Ricketts have two tiers of memberships: Full members and social members.Anyone who rotates into a House is automatically a full member; individuals who would like to become members afterward can choose between full and social membership. The relative difficulties in attaining full and social memberships differ from House to House, as do the relative privileges that each membership type affords. The only universal truths are that full membership is harder to attain than social and that full members may live in House-associated property while social members may not. Generally speaking, social members are able to attend all House social events.
List of the Houses
South Houses
The South Houses are often referred to as "Hovses" since that is the spelling used in the inscriptions on the actual buildings, in imitation of ancient Latin writing. The South House complex opened in 1931.Blacker House
Blacker House was built with the help of funds donated by Robert Roe Blacker, a trustee of Caltech. Members of Blacker House are referred to as Moles.One of the traditions of Blacker House is the Hellride. In a defiant response to the prohibition against playing Ride of the Valkyries, the freshmen living in a part of the House named Hell would announce a Hellride. They then barricade the hallway and play The Ride at high volume, daring the upperclassmen to break in and drag everyone to be drenched in the showers.
Blacker House features halls painted as Heaven and Hell, as well as a small lounge and kitchenette in between them known as Purgatory. Blacker's courtyard formerly featured a habitable treehouse and a giant tire swing, but the tree that bore them was cut down during renovations of the house in the 2005–2006 academic year. Attached to another tree was another wooden swing, but that was cut down in 2019. In another side of the courtyard is a couch swing.
knows how it got there, they aren't telling. Credit:NASA/JPLThe letter of Blacker Hovse are γδβγ. The story is that in 1978 or 1979, it was popular for Blacker students to climb on top of elevators and ride them. One time, security went inside the elevator looking for the students, who were on top of the elevator. The security muttered, "God Damn Blacker Gang", and the phrase stuck. Blacker students began signing GDBG or γδβγ on all their pranks. Blacker has also been referred to as the Hovse of Fucking Geniuses and the inscription HOFG can be found throughout the tunnels along with γδβγ. In the 1960s the hovse slogan was "Blacker Hovse for gracious living" which became "The Hovse of Gracious Living" by the 1990s.
Notable alumni include:
- William Shockley co-inventor of the transistor and Nobel laureate
- Walter Munk oceanographer who determined the reason for the moon's tidal locking with earth
- Carver Mead a key pioneer of modern microelectronics
- Kip Thorne Nobel Laureate and one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus at Caltech
- Michael Aschbacher an American mathematician best known for his work on finite groups
- Joseph Polchinski known for D-branes in string theory
- Doris Tsao - MacArthur Fellow, Neuroscientist, Professor of Biology at Caltech
Dabney House
In 1928, the Dabneys gave $200,000 to build Dabney House, one of four new residence halls.
Dabney House, as part of the single building that makes up the four "South Houses," was constructed in 1930 and 1931. It was known as the House of Gentlemen and the House of Captains, but underwent a dramatic change in personality during the 1960s. In 1973, the House was disowned by the Dabney family when students from Dabney House protested then-President Nixon's role in the Watergate affair with a sign on the library bearing the phrase "Impeach Nixon."
Traditionally standing for "Dabney Eats It," referring to a particularly unpalatable plate of noodles in the 1950s, the trigraph DEI has come to be a badge of pride for Darbs. Besides naming the house's recreation room after it and spreading it all across campus, Dabney alumni have made DEI a hidden code in the outside world. The letters can be seen in movies and video games. There are even stories of the trigraph making its way into space on JPL probes including the Voyager space craft, and being written on the Moon by astronaut Darb Harrison Schmitt. In the late 1960s, during on-campus shooting of an episode of the TV series, students stenciled the cryptic letters "DEI" high on a wall in a steam tunnel scheduled to be filmed the next day. The marking was subsequently visible on national television behind Peter Lupus as he paused in one shot, unaware of this Caltech contribution to spy drama.
More recently, Dabney started the Student Coffee House, or "Chouse", and provided the majority of the staff for a couple years. Since then, Coffee House has become a part of Caltech's Dining Services and is now managed by CDS. Dabney hosts the annual Millikan Pumpkin Drop Experiment where pumpkins frozen in liquid nitrogen are dropped from Millikan library. This tradition was featured on the TV show Numb3rs. Dabney also hosts Drop Day, a party held the Saturday after the second term drop day to celebrate the point of no return, and Dabney Metal Night, an opportunity for the amateur bands of Caltech to play for the crowd.
While the traditional motto of Dabney House still stands on the Dabney crest, Dabney House has instituted a new, changeable motto. In line with Caltech's tradition of wall murals and wall writings, any member may change the house motto by striking the previous motto on a designated motto wall and writing a new one.
Fleming House
Fleming House was built with funds donated by a number of people, and the name Fleming was chosen to honor Arthur H. Fleming, then the chairman of Caltech's Board of Trustees.Members of Fleming House are called Flems. The house color is red. The motto, from the crest as commonly seen on house beer steins, is "Let the Deed Shaw." The house battle cry is "Go Big Red!" Another important maxim is "Flems stick together!", as well as the slogan "Where men are men, giants walk the earth, and the thundering herd is real". Historically, Fleming House did not offer social memberships, but a recent decision by the house leadership changed this long-standing policy. Students may now apply for and obtain Fleming House social membership.
The physical layout of Fleming House includes rooms numbered 8.5 and π. The Interhouse Trophy, awarded to the winner of the Interhouse Athletic Competitions, has been awarded to Fleming for the past five years.
For the past few years, Fleming and Page House have pranked each other regularly and included each other in initiations.
Fleming Cannon
The Fleming Cannon, a Caltech landmark, rests on its wheels on the Olive Walk in front of Fleming. As it makes a very loud noise when fired, it is fired to mark important events, such as the end of rotation, Ditch Day, the end of the term, and graduation. It was originally cast for use in the Franco-Prussian War but eventually found its way to the then-military themed Southwestern Academy in San Marino, California, where it remained on the front lawn between 1925 and 1972.In 1972 Fleming class officers got permission from Southwestern Academy to take the cannon, but the underclassmen who mounted new wheels on it and dragged it to campus at night thought they were stealing it. It took months of paint stripping and other work to restore it to operational status. The Caltech administration ordered its return in 1975, but negotiations began for an official transfer of the cannon back to Caltech in 1980, and in 1981 it was on a permanent basis to the Caltech campus.
The cannon was stolen by Harvey Mudd students in 1986. At the demands of both college administrations, the Cannon was returned to Fleming House approximately 8 weeks after the prank.
It was rumored that Harvey Mudd would attempt to steal the cannon again in 2006 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their original theft; however, the cannon disappeared on March 28, a day before the anniversary, only to show up at MIT, just in time for Campus Preview Weekend, during which many rising freshmen visit MIT. A moving company by the name of has taken credit. Displayed prominently in front of MIT's Green Building, the Fleming Cannon sported a giant, gold-plated MIT class ring around its barrel.
A day after the prank was disclosed, Fleming's members began planning a recovery operation on the night of April 7. They immediately sent twenty-three members to Boston to retrieve their cannon. The Flems were greeted at MIT by a group of students and police who watched as the cannon was loaded into a truck. Afterward, a friendly barbecue celebrated the event.
Notable Flems
- George O. Abell -Astronomer, Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles
- Ronald H. Willens -researcher at Bell Labs, entrepreneur
- Benjamin M. Rosen -venture capitalist, founder of Sevin Rosen Funds, former chair of Compaq
- Jeffery M. Mendez - Caltech Lecturer in Chemistry
- Ryan Patterson - Caltech Professor of Physics
Ricketts House
Ricketts traditions include fire related activities and the brakedrum. Prior to early 2003, the Ricketts courtyard housed a large concrete firepot, in which massive fires were often enjoyed during cool Pasadena evenings. The courtyard originally featured a large Italian marble well head. It was used as a measure for height of serves in the singles and doubles games of four square played in the courtyard. By the mid-1970s, it existed only as chunks of rubble, after destruction in an experiment in more exciting pot fires allegedly involving newspaper, xylene, and matches. Around that time, enterprising house officers arranged for its replacement with a large section of concrete sewer pipe, which was eventually replaced with a concrete facsimile of the original pot. Due to tightening of Pasadena fire codes and the Caltech administration's recent focus on liability concerns, the firepot was removed. A portable fireplace temporarily replaced the firepot. The brakedrum is a contest between the freshman class and the sophomore class over ownership of the brakedrum.
Ricketts House was known for athletics and student government in the 1950s, but soon after that they became known less for these activities and more for activities that pushed the motto "Take me as I am" to the limit. Recently, Ricketts had an inverted pentagram on the front wall of its dining room. Administration members called for its removal as it was a symbol that may have offended the general public who viewed the house during tours. The pentagram was originally painted in the dining hall for the Interhouse party of 1989 - prior to this time this symbol had no particular connection to Ricketts House. In later years the inverted pentagram was added to the Ricketts House crest. During the renovations from 2004 to 2006, the mural was painted over, and a new mural policy was put in place. Conflicts regarding the new mural policy continued until the early 2010s, when the policy was relaxed. The House features a number of murals, including one featuring the cover art of the Grateful Dead's eponymous album that was painted in the 1970s. Today the house hosts a number of social events throughout the year, including a termly open mic night, featuring music performances by students, a termly formal dinner, and an interhouse party known as Apache.
The building has space for approximately 70 students, while the house had a total membership of about 110 at commencement in 2019. Two graduate student resident associates live in apartments in the house.
Ricketts remains the only house not to offer social membership. A referendum to add social membership in 2018 was defeated by vote of 16 in favour, 43 against, and 3 abstentions.
Notable Skurves and Rowdies
- Carl V. Larson -former Vice-President of Versatec, an electrostatic printing company acquired by Xerox
- Anthony Leonard – Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus at Caltech
- Cleve Moler – inventor of Matlab
- Robert McEliece – Allen E. Puckett Professor and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech
- B. Thomas Soifer – Harold Brown Professor of Physics, Emeritus at Caltech; Director, Spitzer Science Center
- Paul W. K. Rothemund – MacArthur Fellow, Research Professor of Bioengineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences, and Computation and Neural Systems at Caltech
- Nicholas R. Hutzler – Assistant Professor of Physics at Caltech
- Thomas J. Litle IV - Founder and Chairman, Litle & Co.
North Houses
Lloyd House
Lloyd House is smallest of the three North Houses. The North Houses were constructed in 1960 with funds provided by the Lloyd Foundation and other donors. Lloyd House was named in memory of Mr. Ralph B. Lloyd and his wife, Mrs. Lulu Hull Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd was a member of the Board of Trustees of Caltech, 1939–1952.Members of Lloyd House are called Lloydies. The house color is gold, and its motto is "I live and die for those I love", popularly corrupted by mis-reading the banner as "I live for those I love and die."
Lloyd House is governed by a student-elected, student-run Executive Committee, or "Excomm," of 9–10 members: President, Secretary, Superintendent, Treasurer, Social Director, Athletic Manager, and 3 representatives at large. The Social Director and Athletic Manager are aided by the Social Team and the Athletic Team. There are 7 Upperclass Counselors and various appointed positions, such as Librarian, Fridgemaster, and Pool Monkey. Traditional house events include a meet-the-frosh Ultimate Egg competition, Airband, and Beach Trip.
Lloyd House is located along the Olive Walk, and is an "L"-shaped, two-story building. At the intersection of the two branches of the house are "Lower Crotch" and "Upper Crotch," which serve as communal lounge areas.
Lloyd is divided into seven alleys: Purple, Kaos, VI, Fingal's Cave, Valhalla, Inferno, and Tropic. Each alley is decorated with theme-appropriate murals. Some murals include the expansive Purple mural in the theme of Japanese tsunami waves, the Escher mural in Kaos, the tropical mural in VI, the "Enjoy Crack" mural in Inferno that mocks the Coca-Cola slogan and contains a reference to Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen, and the Lloyd Dragon in Fingal's. Several of the names have been changes since the 1970s when the names were: Headquarters, Penthouse, Virgin Islands, Cave, Valhalla, Inferno and Creek. At this time the alleys were mostly painted solid colors with some minimal designs and pictures.
The "shed" used to be a stand-alone building in the courtyard that housed Lloyd's big screen TV. Now the "shed" exists indoors, in a room adjacent to Valhalla that used to be part of the MOSH's office.
In the 1980s, Lloyd had two off-campus alleys, one named "The Place" and one named "Corona". The Place used to exist on the corner of Michigan Ave and Lura St; it was removed around 1988 and is now a parking lot. Corona used to be on the east side of Holliston Ave; it was removed in 1992 and the location is now the new parking structure. Because of Pasadena preservation laws, both houses were moved to other places in Pasadena. The Corona house was donated to a minister who restored it at 1792 Newport Ave, Pasadena, CA. The house is no longer owned by the minister, but it still exists.
Around 1990, in exchange for the loss of Corona, Lloyd adopted "the Quads" alley at 232, 234, and 236 Chester Ave.
Lloydies
, a satirical comic strip that was published regularly in the California Tech, the student newspaper, was drawn and written by Lloydies.In the past, some Lloydies have pulled elaborate pranks. The prank of the 1961 Rose Bowl was pulled off by the "Fiendish Fourteen," members of Lloyd House. Flashcards that were intended to cheer for the Washington Huskies football team were changed to read Caltech. The Hollywood sign was changed to read "Caltech" in 1987 by a group of Pageboys and Lloydies.
Every year since 1994, Lloydies have climbed onto the top of Millikan Library to construct the Lloyd Christmas Tree, a monumental structure of numerous Christmas lights strung together to resemble a 10-story Christmas tree topped with a 12-feet-tall "L." During the big wind storm of 2013, the L broke apart into pieces, so the Lloydies rebuilt the "L", but replaced it instead with a double "L" that is now 16-feet-tall. In 2018, neighbors and the city of Pasadena filed a complaint, as the Lloyd Christmas tree was a religious symbol. The tree is now referred to as the "Lloyd Lights". The latest off-campus pranks have been the pranking of MIT's Campus Preview Weekend, which included many Lloydies.
A folklore that has been passed down throughout the years is that of the Purple LSD lab. It has been said that sometime in the 1970s, a group of chemistry majors living in Purple blocked off some of the alley for a special project. The product of their project, was dubbed "Lloyd-grade" LSD, to denote its extraordinary purity. The rumor goes that it was one of the largest sources of LSD at the time. Nearly the entire senior class was expelled when the FBI invaded the house, though folklore also holds that the perpetrators escaped capture, leaving only a teasing banner for the invaders reading "Welcome, FBI!"
Notable former Lloydies include:
- Cleve Moler – inventor of Matlab and one of the original Lloydies
- Douglas Osheroff – Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of superfluidity in Helium-3
- Steven E. Koonin - physicist, Caltech Provost, United States Under Secretary of Energy for Science
- David Brin – astronomer and science-fiction writer
- Richard Lyon – inventor
- Kenneth Suslick – chemist
- Paul Steinhardt – physicist; winner of Dirac Medal and numerous other prestigious awards
- Joseph Kirschvink – Nico and Marilyn Van Wingen Professor of Geobiology at Caltech
- Taras Kiceniuk Jr. – hang-gliding pioneer
- Nathan Lewis – George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at Caltech
- Gary W. Cox – political scientist; one of only three political scientists to have won twice the George H. Hallett Award
- Schelte J. Bus – astronomer
- Adam Weissman – co-founder of Applied Semantics, which was bought by Google and became AdSense
- Gil Elbaz – co-founder of Applied Semantics
- Adam D'Angelo – founder of Quora and early Facebook CTO
Page House
In response to other houses quixotically claiming certain items to be off-limits in regard to pranks, the Page House president at the time named that the President be unprankable as well. In the past, there were two items in Page House that could not be the target of pranks: the pool table felt and a poster of President Nixon that is passed on to each House President shortly after s/he is elected.
All student rooms in Page are designed as doubles; however, when vacancies arise, upperclassmen may live in rooms as singles. According to house bylaws, the newly elected Page House president may choose to reside in any room as a single. The FU, across from the Library, is Page House's entertainment room, complete with dozens of bean bags. Its name originates from a Ditch Day stack in which the resident graduating senior and president painted a large "F" on its door. Rather than painting over it, Pageboys simply painted a "U" below it. The FU was formerly a triple, and before that was the RA apartment, which is now located downstairs. The Library itself is important to Page House culture, and although its collection is always being removed to be recycled elsewhere, its contents are meant to reflect the works and contributions of contemporary Pageboys. Owing to its distinguished status, one must wear shoes while in the Library. Recently, as a result of pressure from the Deans, the Library underwent renovation, and was reopened after a few weeks.
Pageboy activities include grilling on The Bridge, champagne at Millikan to celebrate the end of quarter, and Intrahouse, in which all eight alleys in Page partake in the annual tradition of applying primer and painting edgy, humorous pictures. The painting in between alleys 6 and 7 covers "the fruit wall", a favorite target for PVC-borne projectiles, particularly fruit which tend to vaporize on contact. In addition to Intrahouse, there is the Wait Staff Initiation, and the Greased Frosh Race, in which Pageboys make liberal use of Caltech's grounds and upkeep fund by selecting a designated freshman in each alley, who is then sent running on the Beckman lawn in the effort to evade upperclassmen who are trying to tackle an opposing alley's Greased Frosh before theirs is tackled. Pageboys then rinse themselves in Gene Pool, producing a visible Crisco and lard film on the surface. Until 2003, they first rinsed in Millikan Pond, but the location has changed owing to administrative request, and now all the Pageboys rinse off completely in the Fleming showers.
Ruddock House
Ruddock House was constructed in 1960 in honor of Albert Billings Ruddock, then the Chairman of the Caltech Board of Trustees. Approximately 160 Caltech undergraduates are members of the House and approximately 80 reside in the House. Members of Ruddock House are nicknamed "Rudds."During the week, student waiters serve family-style dinners in the dining room; some notable dinner traditions include the throwing of bread rolls and "floating" members who break dinner rules by pouring water on them. The hallways, referred to as "alleys" by undergraduates, are adorned with various murals including reproductions of M. C. Escher works, a Monopoly Board, Simpsons characters, and a two-story mural of an astronaut. This mural, called "The Spaceman," is based on a photograph of Ed White's spacewalk during Gemini 4. The painting was made completely by Phil Cormier in a day's worth of work. A few years later Rusty Schweickart, Jr. was elected house president. Another Rudd connected to the space program is Phillip Engelauf, who later became a flight director at JSC.
Other Rudds include Bill Gross of idealab!, MIT's Peter Shor – applied mathematician best known for Shor's algorithm in quantum computation, and Nobel Prize recipients Eric Betzig and Michael Rosbash.
OPI
After the end of a campus-wide undergraduate party tradition, Interhouse, Ruddock began the tradition of OPI. OPI, standing for either "Our Private Interhouse" or " Own Private Interhouse," traditionally occurs during the winter term of the academic year. One of the most notable aspects of the OPI is the amount of time and effort put into construction and artwork for the sets of the party. The past decade's preparations have included a Mayan temple, Roman Colosseum, skylines of Tokyo, a giant Egyptian pyramid, a 16-foot-tall windmill and 20-foot-tall elephant statue from Moulin Rouge, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and a Gothic cathedral with 32-foot-tall facades.Avery House
Avery House is part of the housing system at the California Institute of Technology, participating in Rotation and housing undergraduates, yearlong exchange students, faculty, and visiting guests. Avery's members are called "Averites."Founded in 1991, Avery had previously only housed upperclass students, graduate students, and faculty, but by a 10-to-1 vote in May 2004, the Faculty Board approved the decision to make Avery open to incoming freshmen on a two-year experimental basis. Since the 2005–2006 school year, Avery has been part of the Rotation process and houses incoming freshman.
Some recent traditions include Team Gotcha, an Iron Chef competition, and a Faculty Dessert Night with an open talent show. Avery House most definitely participates in Interhouse Sports, holds an annual Interhouse party, and organizes annual ski trips, beach trips, and BBQs. In line with its historical position as an alternative option to the House system, Avery embraces an accepting mindset whereby anyone who wants to become an Avery member only needs to attain ten signatures from Avery members who are living in the house or have lived there previously.
Avery enjoys an environment of faculty families. The Faculty in Residence are chosen by the students in an interview and discussion process and the faculty are provided budget to hold social events for the undergraduates of the house. Events held by faculty include Super Bowl parties and casual dinners.
In both physical size and bedspaces, Avery House is noticeably larger than the other Houses, housing almost twice as many undergraduates as other Houses. Avery House has several facilities, including a dining hall with a large kitchen, a conference room, a piano room, a library, a garden, and a basement garage. The dining hall, library, and conference room are available to the Caltech community for official events after approval by the Avery ExComm or reservation via the Housing website. Avery also holds a number of “off-campus” spots, which are physically in the house but can be chosen by any undergraduate participating in the off-campus lottery. Finally, owing to a policy said to have been put in place by R. Stanton Avery himself, Avery members are not allowed to place anything "nonremovable" on the walls, though the true origins of this policy are unclear. As a result, murals are painted on canvas and hung up on bulletin boards, instead of painted on the walls directly.