09.07.04
The young man walked toward Adams Hall, feeling somewhat self-concious. He reassured himself that there was nothing wrong with going to visit Cindy in the all-girls dormitory. It was well into visiting hours. And it wasn’t as though he were walking into the bedchambers of a nunnery; most of the girls had desired to be in the coed dorms, and had been disappointed to find they’d received their last choice of campus housing.
He entered the building, walked past the front desk and into the hall of the first floor. Stairs… He spotted a door at the end of the hall and walked toward it.
/Fire Door
Please Keep Closed/
Why did those signs have to look so much like the ones on emergency exits? He opened the door. No? Ah yes, stairs. He began to ascend. He approached the door on the landing. Locked. Perhaps only a closet between the floors. He continued upwards and found himself at the highest point one could reach by these stairs. The door was locked. Nay, it had not been a closet. The doors to the second and third floors were locked. This would not be a problem for a female with the key to her room, but our hero was not a female and had no key, even for his own dorm building, which was newer and granted access to those with properly programmed student identification cards.
He tried knocking on the second floor door. Though he could hear voices on the other side, no one opened. He rattled the handle and knocked some more. No answer. Perhaps in the lobby he could find a girl with a key to let him in. He walked down the stairs to the door through which he had entered the stairway. He turned the handle. /Oh no./ Locked. He was trapped in the stairwell of an all girls dorm. This should not be. The doors should not be locked during visiting hours. A bad design. Suppose a girl had forgotten her room key? An emergency exit mocked him. Oh yes, certainly it would be unlocked. But he knew his predicament didn’t quite qualify as an emergency. Why should a whole building be evacuated because of his entrapment?
He produced from his wallet a Safeway discount card and attempted to circumvent the locking mechanism. This, he realised must be how they catch those foolish enough to attempt to gain access after visiting hours. He put away the card. No luck. He was trapped. *sigh*