--Did college students have mini fridges in their rooms?
--Did college students have whiteboards on the outside of their doors, for people to leave notes on? If not, how would they have gone about leaving notes for each other?
--Did colleges stock the dorms with extra-long twin beds, requiring students to bring extra-long sheets?
I've gone through Wikipedia for each of these items and tried searching them all with "history of" and "1980s" with no luck.
ETA: A huge thank you to everybody who responded; I think these three questions have been answered sufficiently for my purposes! I also now have WAY more detail about MIT dorm culture, and quite a few new things to research so I can get the tech a bit more accurate than simple hand-waving. I absolutely still welcome any details that occur to you, particularly people who went to MIT/had friends at MIT or were involved with computer technology/research in the 80s! Feel free to keep commenting here or message me privately if that's easier.