Butterfield

The front of Butterfield.

Butterfield is a co-ed, first year student residential hall in the upper Central residential area. It is the smallest dorm on the UMass campus. It consists of four floors and a basement, a main lounge area with couches and a TV, a kitchen, two bathrooms on each floor (except the 4th floor, which, due to its smaller size, only has one bathroom), two classrooms, a mailroom, a billiards room, and a laundry room with two washers and two driers. The first three floors have two Residence Assistants apiece, and there is one Peer Mentor on each floor (an Assistant Residence Director also lives on the first floor). It is part of the EPOCH program and the VMB (Van Meter-Butterfield) cluster. It is affectionately nicknamed "The Butt." Participants in the "Reflections" writing program (residing on the second floor) are guaranteed residence in the dorm and take one or two classes in the first-floor classroom.

Butterfield is notable for its small size, close-knit community, fairly-large rooms and spacious hallways, its location at the top of the hill, and its relative isolation from campus (but closeness to Downtown Amherst).

Butterfield Hall is named after former UMass president Kenyon Leech Butterfield.

[edit] History

Butterfield was originally designed as the first all-women’s dormitory. With the onset of World War II it became a ROTC dorm with the women being moved, it is believed, to the newly built Van Meter. After the war Butterfield evolved into a jock dorm due to the angle of the hill and the fact that the flat, grassy area in front (which was cut in half to make room for more parking) doubled as an excellent playing field in fair weather and an ice rink in the winter. At some point in the late ’50s or early ’60s the dorm became coed.

In the mid-to-late 1960s Butterfield was making more money than all of the student government combined, thanks to the entrepreneurial visions and strength of the dorm community. The ’70s saw the creation of a cooperative kitchen. Anyone who wanted to live in Butterfield had to take an active role in making it run, everything from the house council and arts groups to the preparation of daily meals. At some point in the mid-’80s the cooperative fell apart; after this people were paid to work in the kitchen, and various other elements of running the dorm became optional.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's, Butterfield maintained its hippie history, but with an infusion of punk rock blood, an unholy union and synergy grew in the hallways. The Pax-Butterfieldana began. The hallways always smelled of marijuana (not that this was a bad thing) and patchouli (this was a bad thing). Nudity began to take center stage, and hotties started wanting to live there. Life was grand.

However strong the sense of unity was, there was a missing coalescing spark. That occurred in 1992. In fall of 1992, Steve Howard hung a pirate flag out his window. Within hours, Howard was reprimanded by the Area Coordinator and forced to remove the flag. His friend, Marc J. Randazza took the flag, climbed out the window, up on to the roof, and affixed the flag to an old Ham Radio antenna. The Pirate Flag could be seen across the entire campus, and the Pax-Butterfieldana was declared.

The flag remained, a symbol of the dorm's rebellious spirit, for a number of weeks. However, the Friday before parents' weekend, the Area Coordinator, Matt Ouelette, had the flag removed. Butterfieldians saw the cherry picker sent to remove their flag as Czechs saw the Soviet tanks that rolled in to Prague in 1968. That evening, a rare thunderstorm brewed. Not to be defeated, a team consisting of Randazza, Jason Berube, and Greg Pietsch, created a 10 foot banner declaring "Matt Ouelette is a CUNT", and unfurled it from the roof. Parents' weekend began with Ouelette's humiliation. (While this was a high-point for the dorm, it began housing's sniveling and conniving process of trying to destroy the dorm's identity). When the "Matt Ouelette is a CUNT" banner was removed the following Monday, yet another Flag Erection mission was dispatched. The Pirate Flag was re-hoisted to the top of the Ham Radio antenna, the radio antenna was coated in vaseline, and broken glass was poured all around the flag area. The flag remained for the rest of the year, and it became the rally symbol for the formation of the Free State of Butterfield.

[edit] Independence

In 1993, out of disgust for the state of U.S. affairs (and out of rebellion against Housing, whose authority ultimately descended from the government) Butterfield unilaterally seceded from the United States, forming its own micronation later dubbed by residents as "The Free State of Butterfield." The Butterfield Government respectfully requested in a letter to President George H. W. Bush for secession from the state of Massachusetts and from the US. A response to the request was ever received, and thus lacking objection from the U.S. Government, at a house council meeting in 1993, the Free State of Butterfield was declared by newly-elected Butterfield President Randazza. Randazza made the declaration while wearing an Italian flag as a cape, a crown from Burger King, and while seated in a "throne" made of a La-Z-boy.

In order to help cement the new nation's independence, President Randazza purchased a Scottish Lairdship from an ad he found in a magazine, and decreed that the president of the Free State of Butterfield shall also hold the noble title conferred with the lairdship. This aligned the Free State of Butterfield with a number of monarchies, although the Free State was never intended to be a monarchy, and it never became one. Accordingly, every president of The Free State of Butterfield since 1992 has also been "laird" of something in Scotland. The paperwork has been misplaced, but paperwork does not make a noble title.

With this unopposed declaration of independence, and the ascension of the President to the lowest rung of European nobility, the independence of the FSoB was legally solidified. Former Butterfielders still consider themselves to be dual-citizens, and consider Butterfield to be their ancestral land. Much like the jews took 2000 years to return to Palestine/Israel, Butterpudlians consider themselves entitled to an eventual "right of return."

After seven years of attendance at Umass and six years living in Butterfield, President Randazza abdicated and graduated. His whereabouts is currently unknown, and he is presumed to be deceased. There is a rumor that he may have been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but the US Government has refused to confirm or deny this allegation. Cute, actually he graduated from Georgetown Law School and is a First Amendment (i.e. porn) lawyer.

[edit] The Kitchen

During this period, the Great Phil Cavanaugh served as the Maestro of the Butterfield Kitchen. The Kitchen served as the source of community, and the font of the power allowing independence to take hold. Outsiders were unable to understand, but Butterpudlians (and their allied on the meal plan) understood that breaking bread with your friends and neighbors on a daily basis creates a unity that can not be easily split. Throw in random sex between neighbors, and a bond is built that can not be easily torn asunder.

For this reason, Cavanaugh is regarded as the spiritual leader of the FNoB. If Randazza was the red-shirted and often illogical revolutionary, Cavanaugh was the true source of the greatness of the FNoB. During the struggle for independence, Randazza is quoted as saying "you may have the world, but we have Cavanaugh!"

Saint Phil Cavanaugh's whereabouts are unknown as well. However, when the fog is just thick enough, it is said that the right combination of burning leaves and flowers will allow you to hear his bagpipes playing in almost any wooded area. The unwritten Butterfield anthem blaring from the instrument, rallying the lost Butterfielders to return home.

[edit] The Late 1990s

As the 1990s wore on, the sense of community began to slowly crack. The fun atmosphere began to attract students who otherwise might have lived in a frat house or a sorority. They "didn't get it", but enough of the old guard remained and returned (including many dropouts who lived in the area), and the spiritual guidance of the Great Cavanaugh kept hope alive that the FSoB would continue to flourish.

In 1996 a massive, three day reunion was held for all former Butterfielders. There were attendances from all of the decades with a strong showing from the 1970s and late 1980s and early 1990s. This reunion was organized by one who many consider to be the greatest living citizen of the Butterfield Diaspora, Julian Parker-Burns (f/k/a Julian Parker).

[edit] Ethnic and Cultural Cleansing by Housing

At the turn of the century, UMass Housing ended the Butterfield dining program and converted Butterfield to a freshman dorm. As the United States learned to burn Vietnamese villages to drive the Viet Cong out of an area, and as the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, housing learned that to stifle the spirit of the FSoB, it was necessary to destroy the dining hall and to expel the Great Cavanaugh.

There were varying pretexts for this action given by the administration. There were allegations of student misbehavior including drug and alcohol complaints, admission of high school students to parties, and graffiti and vandalism. The breaking point was when a student from Van Meter tried to steal Butterfield's signature pirate flag from the roof. He slipped and hit a first floor balcony.

In Fall 1999 significant efforts to remove any non-conformist elements from the dorm were ramped up. Even small carrying-a-beer-between-rooms led to more than a few oustings. This slowly bled the dorms heart, and the result was that a significant number of students were ousted who otherwise would have been a positive influence on new students. As housing assigned more "corduroy baseball cap types" to the dorm in 2000, the sense of community began to evaporate. Also, that semester, the lowlife Gil Fitzpatrick was placed in the dorm -- he was a narcotics informant. His efforts led to multiple arrests on banquet morning in December of 2000.

There were no serious charges brought against anyone as a result, but it did give housing its justification to further ethnically cleanse the dorm. In spring 2001 it was announced on-the-spur that Banquet would be closed to outside residents which is what was quoted in later articles referring to "residents going balistic". A month before banquet, the University got its "Gulf of Tonkin" incident. Tom Degnan, a Baker resident, fell off of the roof trying to steal the pirate flag - housing attempted to blame this on butterfield even though Degnan was drunk and stupidwhen he entered the building. Residents pleaded with him not to go out the 4th floor bathroom window. Nevertheless, in an act that has been played out through the entire history of life, Mr. Degnan removed himself from the gene pool with this singular act of stupidity. Despite the fact that this was natural selection in its purest form, The Butterfield community was horrified that someone got hurt and showed the utmost respects that night. The dorm gathered in the 1st floor lounge and held a quiet vigil. Banquet was somber at best and ended up being held outside despite success in having an ice luge and all of the usual kegs, etc. Security was posted at every door and the building was locked down.

As for the vandalism that occurred at the end of the semester, it was not butterfield residents who caused the damage to the bathrooms that occurred before finals - this was the event that housing used to ultimately close the dorm and the kitchen. The kitchen was lost when the university claimed that it needed the space - however the space has never been used for anything.

An article in the UMass magazine describes the past history of the dorm and the events that caused the dramatic end of an era. Responses to the Administration's actions can be read in the same periodical.

It appears that the curse of Ouelette came to pass, and the FNoB became a diaspora.

Kevin Monahan said it well:

"The University's "reprogramming" is nothing more than a fascist attempt to stifle one of the things that gave this campus a pulse. The destruction that caused its dissolution was nothing that doesn't happen in any given Southwest dorm over the course of a semester. Bring back the kitchen! Fly the Jolly Roger! Long live the Free State of Butterfield!" (Kevin Monahan, UMass Daily Collegian, May 8, 2002) [1]

[edit] Today

Today, Butterfield carries on the spirit of a close-knit and a creative community even without the kitchen and in-house dining program. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it is still the smallest dormitory on campus and boasts a progressive writing program (http://www.umass.edu/butterfield/) The oral history traditions within the Butterfield community may also prove to be a factor in the equation.

Additionally, the FSoB continues in exile. While the whereabouts of the Great Cavanaugh is unknown, and Randazza is dead, Julian Parker-Burns continues to reign as the de-facto President and Laird of the FSoB in exile.

[edit] The Future

Due to the University's unethical behavior in attempting to kill the FSoB, all FSoB alumni are requested to refrain from making any alumni donations to the University until the Kitchen is restored. Nevertheless, FSoB citizens are asked to set aside any donations they otherwise would have made, and to keep them in escrow until Housing is no longer run by politically correct douchebags.

[edit] Mailing Address

Butterfield Hall
171 Clark Hill Road
Amherst, MA 01003-9206

[edit] External links

• Official Butterfield Webpage: http://www.housing.umass.edu/reshalls/c_butter.html (lame)
• Free State of Butterfield myspace: http://www.myspace.com/butterfield