Word: communalism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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First of all, freshmen, by and large, don't know any better. Secondly, this system would benefit the newcomers, since the "hall" system of the Quad houses--which is likely to remain intact as long as the university lags on renovations--fosters a far more communal atmosphere than the entryway system of most of the Yard dorms. Under this system, the Yard dorms could be affiliated with River Houses, and would doubtlessly become priority housing for seniors...
...orange- and-white fireball nine miles above the Atlantic Ocean. So too had the space shuttle Challenger, the trusted $1.2 billion workhorse on which they had been riding. Transfixed by the terrible sight of the explosion, Americans watched as it was replayed again and again. And yet again. Communal witnesses to tragedy, they were bound, mostly in silence, by a nightmarish image destined to linger in the nation's shared consciousness...
...movies to get out of the house. Observes Screenwriter Kaufman: "For young people, movies are just foreplay, a cheap date before the back seat of the car." Maybe. But people of every age go to the movies to get out of themselves, to share the intense, expansive communal experience of being in the dark, with the huge screen the only light. That experience was easier to achieve when movie theaters were huge, gaudy palaces with plush appointments and ushers dressed like Ruritanian footmen. Alas, those theaters have been razed or, worse, sliced into half-a-dozen small auditoriums that...
...like our Puritan forefathers, we New Englanders need to punish ourselves, and to insulate ourselves from the heathen. By banding together to affirm our allegiance to the Almighty Sox-Bruins-Celts, we share a communal misery (and occasionally a communal jubilation) that confirms our faith and purifies our sporting souls...
...this case, the aforementioned bird) has played a trick on Man, and the statue turns out to be worth little more than a couple of back issues of Penthouse's Madonna issue. In any case, Dewitt has seen both of these classics about 20 times on PBS, but the communal viewing experience might be worth the five-odd bucks...