Dorm Goblins Across the River
The 1916 move from Back Bay to Cambridge gave the Institute room to grow and thrive, greatly increasing the number of students and student activities MIT could support. This also included the introduction of dorm life to the Institute. By 1926 campus enrollment required an urgent need for more dorms, a recurring theme in MIT history (you read more about the expansion of dormitories here).
Campus pranksters have always been a part of university life, and many mischievous engineers left their mark on the Institute over the years. Nearly 70 years before a campus patrol car graced the top of the dome, and long before anyone called it “hacking,” the Dorm Goblin and company put their hard earned engineering skills to ill use. Two famous examples of the Goblin’s exploits in 1926 (to the delight of some and frustration of others) include the placing of a Ford touring car first in the cellar of the ‘93 dorm and then, after it was removed with the help of a tractor, hoisting the same car up onto the building’s roof six weeks later. The Dorm Goblin’s exploits haunted the East Campus for many years, and although The Tech’s reporting often refers to the Goblin as an individual, there is no doubt that in the best tradition of engineering and hacking, it was the cooperation of many students working together that achieved these stunts.
