Beer cans line the floors of 1027 Elm St. and accumulate at the bottom of the stairs. The name says it all—Kevin ’10, Noah ’11, Mike ’10 and David ’10 are living in a slum—or, rather, the $lum.

Mildew in the showers, food from as far back as 2005 and asbestos awaited the guys when they moved in at the beginning of the semester, inheriting the house from the previous group of cross-country guys. “Some stuff you just can’t get rid of,” Noah said.

An eerie blue light glows from the windows of the $lum, left over from the under-the-sea themed party the house threw earlier in the year. “It hasn’t been taken down, and probably never will be,” David said.

Franklin—the “$lum Cat”—is the unofficial fifth resident of the house, and the adoptive parent of the human residents of the $lum. “Franklin got us,” Noah explained. “He was meowing a lot, so we decided to feed him. And then we let him inside,” Kevin said. However, “Animals can’t live in the $lum, except for Franklin,” Noah added. Franklin’s house can be found on the front porch—it is a cardboard box aptly labeled “Franklin’s House.”

Indeed, this is a house where the accumulation of objects—whether cat houses or aluminum—is encouraged. “It’s really fun living in a house where you can just staple shit to the walls,” said David. “When you find something cool, you can just put it on the wall,” Kevin added.

This philosophy has evidently been taken to heart—the walls are filled with pictures, quotes, cross-country medals and pants collected from over the years. “Charlie Knuth just left them here last year,” said Mike, who serves as “the $lum Lord”, which means that it is his duty to finish off all the leftover beers after parties.

The “Party Room,” features the best wall decorations of all—people’s butt marks, since people usually stand on the back of the couches to dance at parties. In addition to leaving behind their mark, party-goers risk falling into the “Penalty Box,” which is a closet the residents have filled with junk and put a couch in front of.

In addition to dancing on couches, the $lum residents have a tradition of urinating out the windows. “It looks oddly like rain at night,” Claire Fleckenstein ’13 said, recalling her experiences at the $lum.

The residents themselves, however, weren’t able to share many stories. “We are sworn to secrecy,” Kevin said. But they did share one story of how someone broke their window when they were showing people the window to pee out of, but then that person “chucked all the trophies out onto the lawn,” Delong said.

One of their favorite traditions of the $lum is the “Minus Two Book.” People get into the book by wronging the $lum, like “having a hot girlfriend…[being] not really that drunk…peeing in $lum cups…putting fireworks in our toilet,” David said, leafing through the laundry list of offenses.

Despite recording such offences, the $lum has no rules except for $lum Law which states that the $lum is ruled by drunkocracy, finish your beers and no apologies. In other words—$lum it, as they would say.