Secrets of the Caltech Cannon Heist Revealed

It's cute to see kids complain about old folks using slang that the kids didn't know they inherited from the old folks.

Interesting. Harvard had that, but dismantled it in the 90s (they still have Houses, but they transitioned from "bidding" to a "randomization" process assign houses), as part of an anti-elitism homogenization movement.

When I was there in the early 90s the house system had serious flaws, but in part that was because I was in Blacker - then one of the most inclusive, friendly, gender-balanced of the houses (though not without issues). Page was notorious for (self-)destructive behavior and though that was probably unfair it'd become enough of a self-selecting culture that they did live up to it more than most houses. I think most of the serious problems were more products of a small undergrad body (800 total) largely isolated from the surrounding community, lots of pressure plus a remarkable level of sleep deprivation, very bright people with a lot of personal issues, easy access to cheap drugs & alcohol in bulk, and a huge gender imbalance. Stress-induced breakdowns/flaming were common, group stalking & sexual harassment were common enough to have their own term (glomming) and sexual assault may have been common as on most other campuses despite geek culture's self image, harassment & assault by faculty was swept under the rug, blatant homophobia may not have been common but LGB students tended to be quiet about their orientation (trans students were dead silent), and the administration was basically uninvolved, untrusted, and authoritarian (to most students' minds).

I think the house system was a mixed bag there, it kept some people closer to each other than was healthy but it also provided some level of support for a lot of us. I suspect things have gotten much worse since I was there, though. The only honor code I've ever seen work was the largely self-policed "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community" and the administration was clearly communicating that they no longer expected students to be capable of following it. My impression is that the morale effects of that really cut into the effectiveness of a system that had helped keep pranks from escalating to the really dangerous or outright damaging, cheating low, and aggression of any form very rare. It was mostly worked because it was too simple to have real loopholes, the community fetishized it, we got a lot of benefits from keeping it working (take home finals, lab keys, etc.), and fundamentally it kept the peace. The administration still has a page describing it, but my impression is that as a social construct it's a hollow shell of what it was.

TL;DR? The house system was less damaging than most frats due to self-selection for house membership, but that also concentrated some really unhealthy behavior and the rest of us were already pretty broken without the houses helping.