Enter at Your Own Risk: A Tale from Virginia Tech’s “Virgin Vault”
Reading about the "Booty Wall" at Howard University last week sent one regular City Paper reader on a trip down memory lane. A graduate of Virginia Tech, she wrote in to share some of the particulars of her time living in that school's "Virgin Vault."
Jules Cooper was a resident in the all-girls Vault in the 80s, when it was on the sixth floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall (the building has since become much better known as one of the sites of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre). Cooper didn't live there by "choice," as the rest of the students did (meaning their parents had carefully considered the risks of girls living among boys, and chosen it for them); she had a forced roommate switch a few weeks after the school year began, and the new roommate was a Vaulter.
The accommodations were such that everyone on the floor - mostly freshmen - shared a common bathroom, Cooper says. And the highlight of the day - I mean, not counting the days when there were panty raids - was "when an old guy from Roanoke came in to get trash and yelled, 'Man onna hall!'"
She writes:
Everyone on that hall was certifiable in one way or another. ... None of my friends on the hall made it past sophomore year, most dropped out from drugs, grades, booze, and yes, [conflicts over] sexual orientation. So much for clean living sequestered away from the boys.
From the outside world, though, we were the girls in the Virgin Vault, whispered reverently. I cannot explain the guy mentality, but it was there. There would be huge panty raids in front of the hall with 100s of frat boys yelling "Vault Vault Vault Vault." We never threw panties. Mostly we lit a candle and sat on the floor until it passed. Also, a favorite hazing ritual from fraternities was to chain a guy to the lamppost in front of West AJ and make a bunch of noise so we'd all watch him take off his clothes to escape. We watched that. Average time to work up nerve to unclothe? Shockingly, a minimum of 45 minutes.
(My, how times change.)
Not everyone living in a "Virgin Vault" is a virgin, believe it or not. Kelly King attested to that fact in a 2002 article in the campus' University of Virginia's Cavalier Daily newspaper called "It takes all kinds to be in the V-Club."
She wrote:
When I was in high school, I decided I no longer wanted to be a virgin. I was the last of my friends remaining in the precious V-club and I hated it. They would sit around and talk about sex with their boyfriends and all I could do was sit and listen or add the occasional oral sex tip. I wanted to know what I was missing....
Fortunately, when I left "the club," my fears were put to rest because I found the right guy, and I didn’t have to wait a decade to get some. Moreover, when I got to college I realized that real life virgins over the age of 16 actually did exist (OK, maybe my friends were way ahead of the game). I was actually one of the only people on my hall who had ever had sex, hence our nickname: the "Virgin Vault."
Jeff Craley, a 22-year-old Tech senior who works at the campus radio station, WUVT, has heard of the Virgin Vault, of course (the housing office says it does not have a "freshman-only, female area" on campus, though there are single-sex female dorms). His impression of anyone who would live in such a place: "I'd probably just assume that they're religious."
Other schools have so-called Virgin Vaults, too, as it turns out; some are all-girls floors, some are girls-only dorms (when the VV at the University of Wisconsin went co-ed in 2006 it was said the dorm had been "deflowered"). Some girls at Indiana University tried to get some T-shirts together commemorating the end of their time in the Vault there. Sadly, they couldn't get the money together in time, but here's the design:
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Linked From: October 27th, 2009Virginia Tech’s “Man Castle”: Now Less Manly - City Desk - Washington City Paper
1:31 pm[...] wouldn’t be fair to write just about the so-called Virgin Vault at Virginia Tech. Because the Blacksburg campus has also been home to a seven-story all-male dorm [...]
2:07 pm
I can't wait until your sexual architecture tour of D.C. colleges gets to G.W.!
2:23 pm
Get your Virginia schools right. The Cavalier Daily is the UVA school newspaper, not VA Tech's. (Gee, ya think maybe that might be why UVA's teams are called the Cavaliers?) The difference may not mean much to you, but believe me to students and alumni of both schools it means a lot. Kind of like referring to the City Paper as the Washington Times, actually.
2:40 pm
My bad, thanks for pointing out. Updating now.
2:45 pm
Also, you imply that West AJ was the main and sole site of the 2007 shootings. It may seem like a small error, but were talking about an extraordinary event here. You wouldn't say "Shanksville, PA the site of the 9-11 terrorists attacks".
3:47 pm
What school are you going to do next? I was a bartender at Froggy Bottom Pub in the 90's and the stories I heard..absolutly hysterical!
4:00 pm
West AJ, the new Pentagon. Man, people are picky. That t-shirt is so absolutely FUG, you'd have to remain a virgin while wearing it.
7:34 pm
I too am a senior at Virginia Tech, and lived in WAJ for 2 years having never heard of any such thing. This isn't accurate.
8:57 pm
@Thug, It's not presently in West Ambler Hall, which is probably why you haven't heard of it there; the alum quoted in the story lived there in the '80s. And Ken Belcher, associate director of housing, tells me the location of what has been, through the years, widely called the "Virgin Vault" can change from year to year, depending on which dorms/floors are female/male/coed (and he doesn't know of a place on campus right now that has been given that name). He also spoke of the "feminization" (my term) of Pritchard; more on that to come.
9:37 pm
Will Hokies alum flock to this story with their panties in a bunch like the HU alums did with the Booty Wall story?
Probably not.
10:52 pm
Skipper. I just checked into HU Booty wall story to see if the fury had died down and the same two people "Just Sayin' and DCNative" are still foaming at the mouth..I believe people are starting to think those two have some serious self esteem issues.