I lived on the fourth floor of a five floor dorm, where they didn’t allow non-disabled people to use the elevator. Second largest dorm in the US, and one elevator.
The most interesting thing about was that due to length of the building and its placement on a hill, my floor was two, three, four, or six stories above ground level. Somewhat confusing when they’re repainting the stairwells and you have to count the number of flights and remember exactly which stairwell you’re on to end up on the correct floor.
Fire alarms were just a fact of life, though the period when they gained a sensitivity to water and went off every time it rained was quite tiring. I also really wanted to kick the ass of the morons a few floors below who thought it would be a good idea to burn books in a trashcan using ascohol as an accelerant. I somehow doubt that it was their only use of alcohol that night.
One year in the dorms was long enough for me. One of my friends has lved in them for five now, something I can’t understand at all. I’ll have to ask her about it.
Ah, Liz Waters is at University of Wisconsin. Built into a hillside, with two long wings extending out, one elevator near the middle. It sounded similar in style.
Hey Pitt! I’d just like to point out that living in the towers is supposed to be awful. I mean they’re not as bad as they could be, having been recently renovated at all. I’m a sophomore who just moved into PA Hall (the new building on upper campus). Let me tell you, after living in the towers for a year, PA Hall feels like a five star hotel.
For the year I lived in residence, we had fire alarms twice a week. I believe one of them was at about 4:00 am on Thursday, bastards were never caught. It got so you just kept your fire-alarm outfit right beside your bed. This was in Ottawa, Canada were winter is no fun. By the end of the semester it seemed like the firemen were getting pretty pissed off, it took them a lot longer to let us back in. There’s nothing like living with others to kindle a dislike of humanity.
"Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper dress for the midnight gatherings in the lobby after someone has set off the fire alarm in the building? I usually choose a pajamas and slippers ensemble; at the most recent one, there was a young man in a tee-shirt and boxer shorts, a man in a business suit with a briefcase, and a woman in a caftan, her hair swathed in a brilliant yellow towel. Her accessory was a paper shopping bag which contained a live cat.
“Gentle Reader: Miss Manners is familiar with the informal gathering you describe; to the best of her knowlege, they are socially classified as come-as-you-are parties. Therefore, the modes of attire you describe are correct. Her instinct, however, would be to avoid the man with the briefcase. Anyone wearing a business suit at midnight is up to no good.”
That’s exactly what I thought of, matt_mcl. I was still nattily attired in the t-shirt and windpants I’d worn that day, but I observed many people in pajamas or bathrobes and several groups in club wear.
The best housing at Pitt was my off campus, non-university owned apartment. No fire alarms, no bullshit rules, no asshole security guards, and no more hassles from fucking nosy RAs.
Ajax. I’m lucky enough to be on the lowest floor that elevators actually go to, so in the rare situations where I want to use the elevator, it’s a 15-second ride. And my room’s just two doors away from the elevator.
I’ve lived in much, much worse. For some reason, while there are two little walls (where the telephone hangs, outlets for 'net are, etc.) in the middle of every other room I’ve been to, my roommate’s side is clear, so on his half, everything fits. There’s AC, the internet usually works for at least half the day, and the cafeteria at the bottom has this truly unique crunchy caesar dressing (silly me was expecting it to be bleu cheese). The only time the elevators broke with me in them, we were still halfway on the ground floor, so they just pried the doors open and let us crawl down.
Now that the alcoholics’ve all got their balls back, there’s plenty of entertainment, too. Really, things are great here, I can’t see how anyone could possibly complain.
Having been to Lothrop twice I’ve gotta ask: is it always so Goddamned hot in there?
Woah. My freshman year, there were people on my floor that golfed, at about 1 or 2 in the morning. I stll remember the shouts of “Go in the hole! GO! IN! THE! HOLE!”
I never looked out in the hallway to see what “hole” they were shouting about.
Last year once, I woke up in the wee hours to the sounds of loud talking. I assumed it was coming from next door, as the walls don’t block sounds very well. However, I stepped out into the hallway to go to the bathroom and found three or four people sitting in the hallway around my door, talking. I stood there for a second, bleary-eyed, counfused, and in my pyjamas, with them staring at me, then finally went about my business.
I love the dorms for amusing random stuff like that.
Then there were all the times the elevators broke. I lived in a dorm that consisted on two 17-story towers, with 2 elevators each. Once, both the elevators broke in the South Tower, and they stole parts from one of the elevators in the North Tower to fix one of them, so that each tower would have one elevator.
Yes, although it’s not at all comparable to the time I was living on the 18th floor of Tower B, in august, and the air conditioning broke.
I also do not understand the wack-ass crap Pitt has about putting all the women on the upper floors of the Towers. Must be some archaic asshole in housing who read too damn many ‘princess in the tower’ stories.
All in all, I give the dorms (and their craptastic meal plan requirement) a huge thumbs down. Especially since it cost more than 9,000$ to live in them for eight months, and an entire year long lease on my Shadyside apartment (where I had many more amenities like my own bathroom, enough space in which to turn around, and the ability to cook good food) was $5000. Much more cost effective to live off campus, at least for me.
I think though, the best part about being out of dorms was the absence of busybody RA.
Most of the dorms at my college had only one kitchen area and thus only one public microwave, but one year I lived in the only dorm that had a kitchenette on every floor.
This meant five times as much opportunity for burnt-popcorn fire alarms!
It always seemed to be burnt popcorn. I, personally, have never burned a bag of microwave popcorn in my life. I was able to prepare microwave popcorn properly as a child, yet somehow this task was beyond many students at a fairly prestigious private women’s college? It boggles the mind.
The hypothesis I eventually formulated to explain this strange phenomenon was as follows: a student, while entertaining her visiting boyfriend, would decide to make some popcorn. But she wouldn’t want to just stand there in the kitchen for several minutes, so she would decide to have sex with said visiting boyfriend. He would doubtless be done in two or three minutes tops anyway, then they could enjoy a post-coital snack. Unfortunately for the rest of the dormitory, something would go wrong (tricky condom package? snagged zipper? young Casanova manages a full minute longer than usual?), and the next thing you know we’re all shivering on the Quad and cursing Orville Redenbacher.
I was never able to prove my hypothesis, but discussing it helped to pass the time while waiting for the all-clear.
When I was at Pointless Park in downtown Pittsburgh, we had a rash of false alarms. My best friend almost got charged with them! Someone saw the person trip the alarm, but couldn’t catch him, and gave security a description that very closely matched my friend, down to the style of shoes. Luckily, I was his alibi, and they did catch the real false-alarmer. Don’t know what happened to him, though.
After the first fire alarm, I never bothered to leave my dorm room for fire alarms. They were set up so every room had a door to the outside, anyways, so I could’ve gotten out if there really was a fire.
As for dealing with the people I lived with: my (15-year-old, unless she was 16) roommate was booted halfway through the semester for not keeping her GPA up. She moved out gradually, leaving her stuff in the room while spending most of her time elsewhere. So, one night I’m sitting around, I hear the door open, and this guy I’ve never seen before walked in. Roommate told him he could sleep in her bed for the night. :eek:
Heh… the only time the fire alarms went off in my dorm was when I set them off screwing around seeing what all aerosol products would create large billowing clouds of flame, and which ones wouldn’t.
Degree anti-perspirant creates nice flame, but also creates a cloud of smoke like a badly tuned diesel.
This set off the fire alarms in a big hurry.
The kicker to the whole story?
I was the RA on that floor at the time!
