Column: One Door Opens. Another Doesn’t.

By Sam Lovett-Perkins

Staff Writer

About a week ago, I was running late to class after X-band lunch on Friday. It was particularly frustrating as I was going from the second floor to the fifth knowing that the easiest way to avoid the congested main stairwell was to take a detour through the notoriously disgusting, but much less crowded, back staircase. Racing to get to Mr. Baird’s “Isms” class, I hastily rounded the turn between the 4th and 5th floor and went to yank the door open. It wasn’t until my hand hit the flat metal of the door that I noticed something was amiss. There was no door knob!

I’m sure I share this feeling of frustration with the many students who are simply looking for a faster way to the 5th floor. Each of them is now forced to choose between waiting for someone on the other side, or taking the humiliating walk back down to the 3rd floor only to climb all the way back up. This is an unnecessary source of frustration for students in a rush, the knowledge that all that keeps you from getting to class is a missing doorknob.

Luckily for me, my friend had a small piece of metal that we used to pull the door open through the empty doorknob hole. A piece of advice: I suggest searching through your bag for some kind of hook. Something that can be used to pull open the door.

As you scour your bag for this item, wondering “Why me?” (as I did) , I urge you to consider what events have brought you to this point in life. Was it ignoring the warning of another friend (as I did) or perhaps bad karma for not picking up that last piece of trash off the floor (as I should have)?

But one question remained. Who would break the door and not fix it? I knew that somewhere inside of SLA, the culprit walked the same hallways as their victims.

After much investigation, this columnist (with the entire journalism staff) caught the saboteur–none other than Junior Jamie Murphy. She sheepishly confessed, admitting to knocking out the knob — which was already loose, she told us — while trying to forcibly open the door.

So what’s next? Should we punish the culprit (hang her by her thumbs), or show some mercy and deal with it for a while? After all, the broken door isn’t really Jamie’s fault — but the problem continues to vex me.

This morning, I once again made my way up the grand back staircase to the 5th floor, believing that given a week of such inconvenience, someone surely must have taken care of this problem. Lo and behold, I get to the top and find that there is no door knob but perhaps something just as good. I suppose that the chair positioned between the door and the wall is an acceptable quick-fix, but by no means a permanent solution to SLA’s latest problem.