What do a broken bathroom stall door, election hate propaganda, and an unsubstantiated bomb threat have in common?
I am an English major. For better or for worse – and seven majors later – I have finally come to terms with it. I have also come to terms with the inordinate amount of time that I spend in lovely Denney Hall as an English major.
We English majors joke fondly of the dilapidated building that houses our department.
The infamous broken door on the third stall in the women’s bathroom on the second floor, for example, has become a beloved part of our world. In fact, I personally favored that stall more than others – it was always unoccupied and amply supplied with toilet paper; who cares that you had to lift and slam in order to get the lock to latch. This year, the door has been removed, presumably so it can be replaced or fixed.
I will even go so far as to recall a certain professor of mine who joked about an anonymous act of arson in hopes that good ol’ Denney would burn to the ground and force the University to rebuild. Maybe in the image of Hagerty or Schoenbaum. All in jest, of course, because Denney Hall is our home and despite complaints to the contrary, we harbor a certain love of it.
None of us are surprised when we enter a classroom and see scores of pamphlets comparing one political party or the other to Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany and we, as English majors, have come to expect a certain chill in the air as a result of a temperamental furnace.
Today, however, I was surprised. Atypically, I was running 10 or 15 minutes late for my first class. Shortly after my arrival at Denney, I noticed droves of people collected outside the doors that open onto 17th Avenue.
Upon further inspection, I realized the droves of people were protesters, holding signs in favor of one cause or another, and generally not worth my time. Feeling slightly like a scab crossing a picket line, I entered the building with the intention of entering class.
Denney, however, was eerily vacant. A university cop guarding the hallway did not deter me – it is Ohio State, really nothing surprises me anymore – and I plowed on, hoping that my entry would not disrupt the class to too great an extent. Much to my ecstasy, the classroom was empty. All of the classrooms were empty.
I returned to the policeman who was vague at best. “There’s a protest. Some of the teachers have cancelled class or postponed for half an hour.”
This was sufficient enough information to plant me firmly on a bench in the hallway, armed with some 17th century British literature and my cell phone on the ready at my hip. What the officer failed to mention was that the reason the building had been evacuated was because of a supposed bomb threat, intended to go off in Denney Hall at 11:30 a.m. I entered the building at 11:45.
Surely the officer would not have let me in if the premises had been unsafe, but how do I know that?
Apparently the need existed to vacate the building and to keep an officer close by, so why was I not informed of the potential danger? I have never, in all my time as an OSU student, felt unsafe on campus. Until today.
Kristen Stocker is a senior in English. She can be reached at [email protected].
