History

The South Hovses

Before the South Hovses were built, Caltech had a number of off campus greek fraturnities along with a dormatory. The Trustees decided that they wanted to build better on campus housing for the students. As part of the process the Trustees wanted a study of how other Universities houses studentes.

“Early in November, 1930, the Board of Trustees requested the President of the Associated Students Body to appoint a representative committee of nine undergraduates to prepare a plan for the organization of student life in these houses.” [Bulletin of the California Institute of Technology, Vol XL, Number 141, Report on Undergraduate Student Houses, March 1931] Walter Scholtz (fr: 1929, left: after 3rd term 1933) was on that committee. He was also selected to be one of 3 that was given a leave of absence and funding to go look at other college houses and report back. They looked at: Oxford, Cambridge, University of London, Cite University (France), the University of Toronto (Canada), Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore, Haverford, Cornell, Duke, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Miltary Academy (West Point), Williams and the University of Chicago. After reporting back to the other six committee members, the quoted Bulletin was written.

The overall structure of the South Houses was designed by the architect Gordon B. Kaufmann who also designed the Caltech Atheneum. Building began probably after 3 April 1930 and was completed by September 1931. The cost of each house was to have been about $200,000. [Ripped from gdbg.org]

Who was Dabney?

DEI (Dabney Eats It)?

The letters DEI and their lowercase Greek equivalents have long been associated with Dabney House at Caltech. The origin of this trigraph dates so far back that there is no hard evidence, only legends.

It is commonly reported that Caltech foodservice once had a dish which was eaten only by residents of Dabney House, and that the phrase “Dabney Eats It” was coined by foodservice workers. The same story reports that the letters FEIF may have been coined in response when some kind of inter-house contest was held where “Fleming Eats It Faster”. Such an origin scenario is supported circumstantially by another quadgraph, a lowercase Greek gamma-delta-beta-gamma. This is known to have originated during the 1970s when a Caltech security guard responding to some campus antics was overheard saying that it must be the “God Damn Blacker Gang”.

Other reports say that the origin of the letters DEI occurred during World War II when normal student life at the Caltech student houses was temporarily interrupted by the needs of the war effort. If this is the case then the likelihood of verifying the original meaning is about the same as finding out who “Kilroy” was.

Steve Allen has correspondence indicating that Fleming was taunting Dabney with a “Dabney eats it” chant as early as the 1956-1957 academic year. Any information regarding when during the 20 years previous the phrase originated will be most welcome.

An alternate account follows similarly. Back when the South Hovses were in their infancy, the quality of food service was quite miserable. Yet, the worst of these dishes was the hit “noodles with stuff”, which was hated by all students but one. This one student was the Dabney representative on the food committee, who only said “Dabney Eats It”. The Fleming representative, being competitive, shouted without thinking “Fleming Eats It Faster”, which originated the trigraph DEI and quadgraph FEIF, so the story goes.

Why are they South Hovses instead of Houses?

The u in Houses goes to v under the old lettering used on the Hovses.