For those not aware, Caltech's dorms are called "houses" and each has its own personality. Some are more nuts than others (I dated a Page girl for long time).
Some are known for their pranks, some for their love of certain types of alcohol. It's a frat system that (almost) every student joins, rather than the typical less-cohesive dorms seen at most of universities in the US.
My outside perspective is that the house system leads to some very destructive tendencies but those within Caltech love it.
When I was there in the early 90s the house system had serious flaws, but in part that was because I was in Blacker - then one of the most inclusive, friendly, gender-balanced of the houses (though not without issues). Page was notorious for (self-)destructive behavior and though that was probably unfair it'd become enough of a self-selecting culture that they did live up to it more than most houses. I think most of the serious problems were more products of a small undergrad body (800 total) largely isolated from the surrounding community, lots of pressure plus a remarkable level of sleep deprivation, very bright people with a lot of personal issues, easy access to cheap drugs & alcohol in bulk, and a huge gender imbalance. Stress-induced breakdowns/flaming were common, group stalking & sexual harassment were common enough to have their own term (glomming) and sexual assault may have been common as on most other campuses despite geek culture's self image, harassment & assault by faculty was swept under the rug, blatant homophobia may not have been common but LGB students tended to be quiet about their orientation (trans students were dead silent), and the administration was basically uninvolved, untrusted, and authoritarian (to most students' minds).
I think the house system was a mixed bag there, it kept some people closer to each other than was healthy but it also provided some level of support for a lot of us. I suspect things have gotten much worse since I was there, though. The only honor code I've ever seen work was the largely self-policed "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community" and the administration was clearly communicating that they no longer expected students to be capable of following it. My impression is that the morale effects of that really cut into the effectiveness of a system that had helped keep pranks from escalating to the really dangerous or outright damaging, cheating low, and aggression of any form very rare. It was mostly worked because it was too simple to have real loopholes, the community fetishized it, we got a lot of benefits from keeping it working (take home finals, lab keys, etc.), and fundamentally it kept the peace. The administration still has a page describing it, but my impression is that as a social construct it's a hollow shell of what it was.
TL;DR? The house system was less damaging than most frats due to self-selection for house membership, but that also concentrated some really unhealthy behavior and the rest of us were already pretty broken without the houses helping.
I saw what happened at Caltech during the rash of suicides in 2009/2010 and watched as a number of people I knew (including my now-ex girlfriend) tailspinned into very destructive behavior and IMO house culture exasperated the problems. Depression led to some drawing themselves more into the destructive tendencies of certain houses which put them in over their heads and unable to emotionally sustain themselves.
House culture and the alcohol/drugs that comes along with some of them became their primary escape from the academic pressure of Caltech and the social pressures that came with being in the middle of a suicide cluster. Unfortunately, that doesn't help with depression, just pushes it aside temporarily. Truly a painful situation for those involved.
Interesting. Harvard had that, but dismantled it in the 90s (they still have Houses, but they transitioned from "bidding" to a "randomization" process assign houses), as part of an anti-elitism homogenization movement.
When I was at Caltech in the early 90s the general belief[1] seemed to be that we'd stolen the cannon from Harvey Mudd originally and the concept of MIT stealing it from the Flems[2] was hilarious. The Flems would be flustered, the Mudders would have to get it back from Massachusetts, and the rest of us would applaud and go back to setting things on fire, painting on the walls, and lock-picking. Inter-house rivalries were more of a running gag than an actual conflict - especially since there was heavy overlap between house memberships (you could and often did join more than one) - but it played into the continual pranking/stacking.
[1] Short institutional memories confusing the issue further.
[2] Fleming house members, basically stereotyped as Caltech's jocks at the time. I can't throw stones, I was a Mole and there were plenty of jokes about us, plus I almost dated a Flem.
correct on both counts. that particular dorm is called fleming. to the best of my recollection, their neighbors, the darbs, who couldn't have cared less, continued apace doing math, negotiating (only) with terrorists, wondering whether homology might somehow explain stable orbits among pyramidal neurons, and stealing the flems oranges.
That said, awesome prank.