In the wee hours of a grey December morning, Grayson Lee was all alone, struggling with a massive erection.
“It was raining, so no one else really wanted to get involved,” he said over the phone from Peterborough. “So it was just me out there for a couple of hours at one in the morning, in the rain, building an 8-foot snow penis.”
The first-year student lived at Gate House, Victoria University’s last allmale residence. Notorious for monkey business, Gate’s toga parties are said to be an inspiration for Animal House: co-star Donald Sutherland lived in the neighbouring South House. Alumni include former prime minister Lester B. Pearson.
Lee freely described Gaters as “rowdy,” “annoying,” “childish,” and “loud and obnoxious.” Still, he said, their antics and rituals—expressions of the tight-knit G-House spirit and harmless diversions—were all in good fun.
Senior administrators weren’t amused. Gate House will be co-ed as of January 2008, and its former residents, some of whom didn’t participate in pranks, have been rehoused. Paul Gooch, president of Victoria University, cited “flagrant acts of defiance […] reasonably seen as disparaging and demeaning of women” in his decision to break up the house.
Supporters bewailed the loss of Gate House traditions, but “breaking the cycle” is exactly what Jason Hunter, Vic’s dean of students, sought to do.
“If something’s a tradition but it’s racist, or sexist, or homophobic or whatever the case may be, then that tradition isn’t acceptable,” he said.
The latest caper saw a pack of Gaters baking a pig’s head, taken from the annual Vic festive dinner, in an oven at the co-ed Middle House before chucking the burnt noggin in a third-floor shower at the all-female Annesley Hall.
In September, then-president Chris Hummel continued Gate’s traditionals, a mischievous three-night orientation, despite the dean’s warnings previous to and during the revelry. Hijinks included chalking Convocation Hall and other buildings, singing an obscene song to Annesley, and leading blindfolded frosh around campus.
“That’s the gist of it all the way through, the lack of respect or willingness to recognize Gate House as a part of a college, as part of a universi- ty that has certain standards in terms of making people feel welcome,” said Dean Hunter.
In addition to the well-known practical jokes, said Hunter, his office received numerous complaints of ongoing disturbances throughout the semester, with Gate residents yelling out the window at passers-by, 2 a.m. airhorn trumpeting, and other rambunctious behaviour.
“That’s what residence life should be about, getting together as a community in mock wars against other communities,” cried Lee, operating under a completely different definition of communal harmony.
Some students, like Annesley residents Karen Schieman and Maggie Stephenson, don’t see what all the fuss is about. “It wasn’t a specific tactic against any individual or our gender,” said Shieman of the pig’s head. “It was just a prank.”
Jeska Grue, who lived at Annesley last year, said that some women were more angry because the administration forbade them from retaliating against Gate’s offensive song.
Grue also found crime and punishment incongruent, especially compared to the stunts of her father, Jim, and his fellow Gaters in the ’70s: “They did atrocious things.”
Barred from Annesley for the rest of the school year for accompanying the pig’s head partway on its journey, she said she will transfer to Dalhousie University next year due to a combination of disappointing academics and “admin jazz.”
“It’s a breach of trust that kind of frightens you,” she said.
For his part, Jim Grue rued what he viewed as lack of student activism. “They’re bogged down with political correctness,” he said of the Vic and U of T student unions. “Certainly in my day they never would have let such a blatant bullying by the administration go unchallenged. At Convocation Hall there would be 10,000 students with police and horns and everything else.”
Though Hunter acknowledged the unpopularity of all-male housing—“ 30 to 50 per cent of the students living in Gate House wanted a co-ed residence”—he flatly denied that supply and demand influenced the admin’s decision.
“There are so many ways that things become more public now,” he said. “And once things become public, then of course the college has a responsibility to address them.”
Wikipedia provides a detailed chronicle of Gate House. Media coverage by outlets such as the Toronto Star and Reuters led several offended students to message Lee on Facebook, prompting him to hide his profile.
Gate House now lodges a mix of Vic and international exchange students, including female residents for the first time in its 94-year history. For Lee, this is the end of an era. “Gate House is a brotherhood,” he said mournfully. “That’s where it dies now. It dies now with us.”
