Back in 1891, California was still part of the Wild West. Stanford housing assignments were made accordingly. Starting in 1892, each roommate pair faced off in a duel. They had to walk thirty paces from each other, draw their guns and shoot. The person left standing was guaranteed housing for his or her second year, and the other one was dead. This is how housing assignments became known as “the Draw.”

Eugenicist David Starr Jordan was a big fan of the Draw because the poor, the effeminate and the effete generally lost. Since Jane Stanford was against anything that Jordan supported, she opposed the killings, calling them “very weird.”

When her husband died in 1893, Jane decided to guarantee housing for everyone based on a random selection system. America didn’t have lotteries back in 1893, but they did have picnic basket auctions, wherein women made picnic baskets that men bought at a charity auction. The highest bidder won the basket, the girl who made it and a bottle of Levitra. This was Jane’s inspiration for the new Draw.

Roommates were paired according to auction bids. There were some kinks in the system, though, since all of the picnic basket-makers were women and all of the bidders were men. The LGBT center on campus tried to support women bidding for other women but couldn’t do it under the strictures of the law. At that time, females were not allowed to be in public with more than a Susan B. Anthony dollar on them. This was ironic.

Because of these auctions, Jane Stanford unwittingly became responsible for the first co-ed housing on campus. When the administration sorted out the mess, they accidentally left a girl named Lou Henry in a one-room double with Herbert Hoover, not knowing she was female. After the scandalous 1895 “Screw Your Roommate” dance incident in which the couple took the title literally, Herbert and Lou were forced to marry.

Starting in the 1920s, the Draw became more similar to the experience we know and love today. The housing department set up an extremely large bowl in the Quad and filled it with numbered balls. They put flasks of gin and jazz records at the bottom of the bowl as incentives for students to dive in for their numbers.

During World War II, there was a military training base on Stanford campus. Venereal diseases were rampant. Students were assigned numbers based on their type of disease and how close to Cowell Health Center (now Vaden) they needed to be. This is when the sororities were moved to the Cowell Cluster.

During the Vietnam War, the Draw became a random number lottery system. Many students mistakenly thought they were being assigned their draft numbers and fled to Canada.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, former communists were allowed to come to Stanford. In 1989, they rigged the computer system so that it gave everyone the same draw number. Students started taking to the streets when they were all assigned to FloMo.

That same year, God sent the Loma Prieta earthquake to punish the communists. The University’s biggest loss was in the damage to the church, inciting the following Stanford Daily quote from the communists: “Neener, neener. The joke’s on You.”

From that point on, the Draw has been completely fair and unbiased. In 1998, Chelsea Clinton got a 2409 and lived on the row in Xanadu for the next three years.

Thanks to the Draw, Kathryn McGarr got to live in Wilbur for three years. To find out where she lives now, email her at kmcgarr@stanford.edu.