The horror! Photo by Ramsey Haefner

Imagine if you will: You get out of your room with minutes to spare before your next class starts. You have everything you need, but are running a little late and hope that an elevator will come quickly so you can get to class on time.

Luckily, an elevator comes right away with no one in it and you push the button marked “L”, symbolizing freedom. But, after you hit the button, the doors to the elevator don’t close. It just stays there as you awkwardly stare at the people waiting for an elevator going up. Even after frantically pressing the door close button, it still stays open, until finally, it gives the annoying warning series of beeps and the doors close slower than they ever have. As you finally reach the lobby, having stopped at another floor and having the doors do the same thing, you run to class knowing you will be late and are wondering what cruel twist of fate allowed the elevator to become so slow.

Thus is the mystery that has fallen upon Campion residents for the past two days. The leftmost elevator always stays open until the doors realize they’ve been open too long, then they beep, then they close. This makes using the elevators much slower because no one wants to use this elevator due to the fact that it stays, with its doors open, on any floors it’s called to for around two to three minutes. Already using the elevators can be frustrating, especially living on a high floor where the elevators have to stop on every floor in between on the way up or down.

However, because the stairs are always locked to every floor, one can only go down. So people have to use the elevators going up to their floor, even if it’s just to the second floor. Why they use them going down always amazes me, because it would certainly be faster just to take the stairs.

And now the broken elevator is laughing in our faces. It inspires so much hope, usually because it comes first, but this is just because it endlessly floats up and down, never actually being useful. Once the realization that the happy bing of the elevator is actually the cursed one, morale is crushed, never returning for the rest of the day after being so betrayed. It hurts so much because it is known that once one elevator is at a floor, no other one will come! So once the evilevator (if you don’t mind the horrible, horrible pun) finally closes its doors, any other elevator that might have stopped has already gone by and you’ve missed it.

Hopefully, if there is any mercy in the world, the elevator will stay in one place long enough for someone to fix what ever the problem is.

Elevator #3, I hate you.