Two years ago, Elli Gurguliatos ’25, then a residential assistant (RA) in the dorm Shafer, got a worrisome email from Paula Queenan, community director of the Shafer and Pomeroy residence halls.
“Paula is like everyone’s mother or grandmother. She’s been at Wellesley since 1999—she’s a campus legend!” says Gurguliatos, now Shafer house president (HP). “I love Paula Queenan, and she always sends Res staff these wonderful emails in giant blue Comic Sans with all these extra emojis. So one Wednesday morning, Paula emails the Shafer House Council and says, ‘Guys, where are the couch cushions?’”
When members of the Wellesley facilities team had gone to clean the common rooms that morning, the cushions were missing—from all of the common spaces in all four dorms in the Hazard Quad. “Just all of the couches were stripped bare!” says Gurguliatos.
As the Shafer, Pomeroy, Cazenove, and Beebe council members were trying to make sense of what happened, they discovered notes scattered around their dorms: We stole your cushions, hope you don’t mind! We wanted to make a pillow fort! Love, M. So they stormed Munger residence hall, where they found all the Hazard Quad cushions neatly piled in a room in the basement, each labeled with masking tape saying which dorm space they’d been taken from. The Munger House Council members were confused.
Only after the cushions had been restored did it come to light through the HP group chat that members of the McAfee (the other M dorm!) council had, in the middle of the night, trekked across campus, taken the cushions, labeled them all, carried them to the basement of Munger, left notes signed with an “M” to frame Munger, and retreated to McAfee. “It was dramatic, for sure,” says Gurguliatos, laughing. The prank has since become a House Council legend.
House Council, also known as “HoCo,” is the governing group in each of the 12 main dorms on campus (Bates, Beebe, Cazenove, Claflin, Freeman, McAfee, Munger, Pomeroy, Severance, Shafer, Stone-Davis, and Tower) and is made up of a dozen or so residents who meet regularly to discuss issues relating to their hall. (Other living spaces on campus, such as the Lake House co-ops and the language houses, Casa Cervantes and the French House, have their own systems.) The dorm’s HP leads the weekly HoCo meeting, along with the RAs from each floor, and other dorm residents serve as representatives.
According to the Wellesley College Archives, HPs at Wellesley date back to when students still lived in College Hall. After the hall burned down in 1914, new residences were built across the campus, and each dorm got its own HP and HoCo. In the beginning, HoCos focused mostly on administrative tasks such as going over the College Government senators’ weekly report or approving events to be held in dorm common spaces. One member was the fire chief, in charge of teaching residents how to evacuate in an emergency; another made sure plastic, glass, and paper were sorted properly for recycling. (The author of this story served as a Claflin recycling rep from 2006 to 2008.)
But over the past few years, especially since the pandemic, the HoCo’s role has changed. Many tasks that used to fall on members have become centralized at the College: Facilities Management handles recycling, and there is an application process for reserving spaces for events. So, what is a HoCo to do now?
The councils still maintain some traditions—going over the weekly senate report, electing a fire chief—but the meetings are more lighthearted, with members often inventing positions, many of which have the sole purpose of being funny or silly or sweet. Shafer has a head jester, a dad-joke rep, and a “little guy” rep who shares pictures of cute animals with the group. Tower has a rep who rates the best apps for finding love at Wellesley. Severance (which was recently renovated to become more accessible) has an elevator fairy, and Claflin has teapot reps who host weekly teas in the dorm living room. At HoCo meetings RAs also have time to present, and they raise issues ranging from how to have tough conversations about politics to “dining hall slays and nays.”
“I was really lonely my first year, but I knew every week I could go to HoCo and be around people.”
And while not all of the dorm pranks are as elaborate as CushionGate, they are part of a newer Wellesley tradition of HoCos declaring love and/or war on each other. Each council now has a love and war rep (sometimes known as a “deity” of love and war) who plans the inter-dorm shenanigans.
“HoCo is a space to forget about classes,” says Bella Peña ’25, Claflin lifer and current HP. The unofficial Claflin mascot—a plastic skeleton named Kulima—has been stolen many times by other HoCos, and was recently strung up outside the Tower house president’s room (the famed Princess Suite, once occupied by Mayling Soong Chiang, class of 1917, who later became first lady of the Republic of China). “We’re trying to bring back the fun and life and togetherness that Wellesley lost during COVID,” says Peña. One of her closest friends, Lottie Abascal ’25, whom she met when they were first-years in the Claflin HoCo, is now the Severance HP, and the two are planning to host combined Claflin-Severance HoCo meetings this spring to foster connections across Tower Courtyard.
The majority of members tend to be first-years, which can be a good way for them to get acclimated to the College. “Sometimes at first they don’t realize HoCo is optional,” says the Stone-Davis HP, Scout Painter ’25, laughing. “But going to HoCo is a great way to develop relationships with the people you live with and a way to kick-start making friends at Wellesley.”
Many first-years who join their dorm’s HoCo go on to become RAs and later HPs. That was the case with Painter, Abascal, Peña, and Gurgliatos. “I was really lonely my first year,” says Abascal, “but I knew every week I could go to HoCo and be around people.”
“HoCos are intentional communities,” says Painter, whose goal as an HP is to make Stone-Davis a safe, welcoming environment and to find ways to “focus on joy” in the dorm. Painter says that with Stone-Davis and Munger—buildings she describes as “island dorms” because they are outside the three big dorm complexes (Tower Complex, the Hazard Quad, and the East Side dorms)—the acts of love and war offer an excuse to reach out to students across campus. One time, the Stone-Davis HoCo hauled all the lamps from the Tower common rooms back to Stone-D. This semester, they crashed the Shafer HoCo meeting and, in an act of love, sang One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.” Later Gurguliatos thanked Painter, saying the Shafer residents “really needed that today.”
“It’s silly, it’s fun, and it doesn’t really harm anyone,” says Painter. “None of us are putting these pranks on our résumé.”
If they did, many would be able to add experience as wedding planners: The ultimate act of love is when two dorms get married. Claflin and Severance have a romance that is “written in the stars” (according to Peña) and they have a wedding (or is it a vow renewal?) every year, during which the dorms’ love and war reps participate in a staged “marriage ceremony,” followed by a HoCo party. Stone-Davis and Munger are also currently a couple.
“It’s just such a funny bit,” Painter says, “because it’s like, when you explain to other people, yeah, our dorms are getting married, they’re like, what does that even mean? But it’s kind of awesome that it has developed a meaning at Wellesley—it’s just about making another HoCo smile.”
Last semester Ryan Skinner ’28, the love and war rep for Cazenove, pulled off a “Pom-posal” to pop the question to their neighboring dorm, Pomeroy. Skinner, along with Caz HP Sylvia Nica ’25 and the rest of the dorm’s HoCo, planned an elaborate proposal, involving a ring made from pipe cleaners and a sign that said “Pom you’re the bomb!” (They had made a banner declaring war, too, in case Pom rejected them.)
“This makes campus life more fun, and it kind of keeps you on your toes a little bit,” says Nica. The Caz-Pom wedding is planned for later this spring, but anything can happen in dorm love and war: “Shafer might be stealing our fiancée, and we’ve heard rumors that Stone-D might object at our wedding,” says Nica. “Who knows? It’s all up in the air right now.”
No matter what happens, though, the HoCos are having fun.
“At Wellesley a lot of times people are very, very serious and really locked into their academics, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” says Skinner. “But I think we need a little silliness in our lives.”