Feud Strips Eliot of Rugs

Three illicitly obtained Eliot House rugs were hung prominently from the sprinkler pipes in Adams House dining hall this weekend as the spoils of a small battle between the two Houses.

Residents of Adams stole the three Eliot rugs, which all bear the House’s shield, on Friday morning as retaliation for the theft of two of their own rugs in the fall, according to Omar M. Abdelsamad ’09, Adams House Committee (HoCo) co-chair.

Roughly two weeks ago, “through reconnaissance missions, we were able to determine that Eliot House was in possession of the rugs,” Abdelsamad said.

Although Adams and Eliot have traditionally enjoyed a good rapport, Adams has bickered with Mather, Leverett, and Pforzheimer Houses in recent years—with the conflict often centering on Adams’ gong, a coveted prize in inter-House skirmishes.

“We are not a violent House,” said Timothy J. Smith ’08, last year’s Adams HoCo co-chair. “But if provoked, Adams House promises to deliver swift, vigilante justice.”

Smith added that he was surprised that Eliot, “perennially known as a good House,” stooped to such levels. “Eliot has fallen from grace,” he said.

In response to Friday’s larceny, residents of Eliot E-51 revealed one of the missing Adams House rugs, hanging it out of their window overlooking the courtyard—equipped for nighttime viewing with a clipped desk lamp.

Residents of the room admitted that they took the rug about five months ago, but said that they have only one of the missing rugs and don’t think anyone in Eliot has the other.

When asked about their motives, Eamon F. Fleming ’10 responded, “Adams basically sucks. We just wanted to remind them of which House is best—but we simply also needed a rug for our room.”

Eliot HoCo Co-Chairs Louis K. Kang ’09 and Alejandro Gac-Artigas ’09 said that Eliot HoCo was not affiliated with the thefts. But Gac-Artigas added that “a criminal in Eliot can be said to be better than a law-abiding student in Adams.”

Over the weekend, the Eliot and Adams HoCo chairs broke bread in Adams dining hall with the Eliot rugs in full view.

According to Gac-Artigas, the Adams co-chairs said that they had entered an Eliot HoCo closet using a key obtained from a Dorm Crew captain. But Abdelsamad denied these accusations.

Eliot House Master Lino Pertile wrote in an e-mail that he was delighted by the fact that Adams residents would treat Eliot floor mats with such respect, hanging them like “Bayeux Tapestry” in their dining hall.

But Adams House Master Sean G. Palfrey ’67 called the Eliot rugs “mud-splattered” in an e-mail, writing that at least they were “serving some form of sorry decorative role,” while the Adams rugs had been “dragged against their will” into the “most undignified” Eliot House student rooms.

As an undergraduate, Palfrey lived in Eliot.

The Adams HoCo chairs and the residents of Eliot E-51 both predicted that the rug hostage crisis would be resolved in the coming week.