pretty much based on the fact I could get my own rez room. What did I know. I might have gone to Queen's or Western, but neither could give me my own room, and if there was one thing I knew I didn't want to do at university, it was share my space with another. Rez life started out in Founders infamous "G" house. We had our own self-appointed "priest" - our residence Don who claimed Italian ancestry. He would bless us and offer us mock absolution for our "sins"...whatever they might have been. We addressed him as Father. At Christmas we decked our tree with beer bottles. The conifer was also hung upside down from the ceiling for effect. We took nude photos of ourselves and sold them to the women in rez as a fundraiser. They were professionally done by a photography major in Fine Arts. I still have them. Our money maker was quickly shut down, however, by the residence tutor on the basis of general tastelessness. Though I remember none of our customers complained.

Such was residence life in the '70s. Probably not much has changed. But just to be sure we thought we'd invite our readers to write in and tell us about their own experiences. Their stories follow. And we took some photos to give you a taste of rez life as it's lived today. Although, as you'll notice, everyone has their clothes on.

- The Editor

There was a lot of stress to living in rez, and we all had our ways of coping. For some it was the video games room; for others, "Purple Jesus" parties; for me - it was sunflower seeds. A pack a night. I was hardcore. I would lie in bed every evening, honing the art of turning pages while handlessly cracking seeds, extracting the meat, and spitting the shells into a container beside my bed.

One night when the stress had made me giddy and I was in danger of cracking in half at my own seams, my boyfriend and I invented a harmless diversion: I would be the bird and he, the bird handler who would lob reward seed at me whenever I tweeted. Now, the story hinges on this tweet. It was lusty, crystal clear and - well, deafening. We kept up a steady "TWEET", toss, crunch, swallow and spit, and would have happily still been at it had we not been interrupted by a lynch mob setting about to nearly tear down our neighbour's door. It was the door of "The Hillbillies", a close-knit two girls and a guy named thus for their frequent all-hours-of-the-night cackling. "This time you've gone too far!" the mob shouted and pounded. "We'll get you for this!"

The next day gossip abounded. In fact, the gossip abounded every year after that day. I was sitting in the caf' with some rezzers when The Day the Hillbillies Got the Boot story was rehashed and I finally learned some of the circumstances. "It was so insane!" one person said. "They had some kind of mechanical bird - a piercingly loud thing. And they kept it up half the night!"

Rita di Ghent [BFA'86]