Snow-capped mountains
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a photo of the front door of Alpha Theta, as seen from the street, in the evening

I blogged a while back about rushing in the fall the gender-inclusive Greek house Alpha Theta. Rush was a fun experience: I got to appreciate how many of my friends were already in the house, and I got to see how cosy the actual house is. And yet, I hadn't had many member responsibilities until this weekend.

a picture of Alpha Theta's library: a map on the floor, surrounded by chairs
The library at Alpha Theta

Sunday was a "House Day:" all members came to the house to tidy up for two hours. Some of my friends were cleaning the fridges and the kitchen. My friend Nicolas and I were tasked with washing the couch upholstery in the living room. Other friends of ours were sifting through long-forgotten and abandoned belongings, decluttering bookshelves and carrying down the stairs piles of junk left in the corners of rooms and hallways.

There are two things that I love about living in Alpha Theta: first, I get to spend so much time with my friends: one of my favorite ways of winding down in the evenings is chatting with my friend Anya, after finishing all work for our CS 30: Discrete Math in Computer Science class and then playing pool with Anya's partner Shawn. The second thing I love about living in Alpha Theta and being part of this community is that we get to take care of the place we all live in together. This Sunday, it was really heartwarming to see all my friends, everyone who, like me, sees the house as their home for this term or even this year, making sure it was as clean, organized, and cozy as it can be.

 a picture of a painting of a snowy mountain against wooden background
A gorgeous painting that had been hidden in a corner for years and no one knew it was there.

Cleaning out and decluttering also leads to some fun discoveries. While cleaning the library, my friends found a gorgeous painting of a mountain (that's now on the wall, where it belongs, as opposed to stashed in a corner, hidden away) and a really old map. Shawn and I could tell the map was old right away, but we wanted to know how

old. So we did some detective work. On top of the map is written the name of Charles Hazen: a few Google searches told us that Charles Hazen graduated from Dartmouth in 1889 and went on to become a history professor at another school.

"Whoa, this map could be a hundred years old," Shawn said when I told him about Professor Charles Hazen's graduation year.

Shawn had a feeling. Another Google search—this time focusing on the whole map—showed us that such a map was published in 1925. We don't know if this is the same map we found in Alpha Theta's library, but it's likely that it is. This Sunday we not only cleaned the house and made it extra cosy; we also found a hundred-years-old map.

a picture of a map, lying on the library floor, with chairs and books at the back
Our House-Day discovery: a map by Charles Hazen, Class of 1889.

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