Illustration by Chris Sharron

Credit: DKS Editors

Read more Stories from Freshman year

When Steve Petkash was a freshman, he found a ‘second entrance’ into his locked dorm room.

Steve, a junior education major, was staying in Wright Hall his freshman year. He didn’t have a roommate because of a room shuffle a few weeks into the semester, leaving him roommateless.

One night, he locked himself out of his room. Instead of panicking, he knocked on his neighbor’s door and went inside. He walked over to the dresser, pulled the bottom drawer out and made his way through the dresser. This landed him safe and sound into his own room.

Early in the semester Steve found out that Wright Hall once had connecting rooms. A cardboard-like wall, which still has a hole accessible only if you pulled the bottom drawer out from the dresser, covers up what was once an entrance.

“It was really nice,” he said, “because if you locked yourself out of your room, you didn’t have to pay a fee and get a lock-out card. All you had to do was knock on your neighbor’s door and crawl through the dresser.”

On Wright Hall’s floors occupied by freshman males, that became a common form of transportation. Though Steve said he only had to use it twice, his neighbors used it much more.

Contact features correspondent Carolyn Fertig at [email protected].

It was sometime in late December and Kevin Daly was getting ready to wrap up his first semester. On a cold evening, he was preparing to take a shower in Lake Hall, much like he did on any other day.

“I made sure I had my key. I remember making sure I grabbed it,” said Kevin, a junior accounting major, “Until I set it down on my desk when I left the room.”

He left his key on his desk as he strolled down the hall with nothing but a towel and a pair of boxer shorts.

Kevin enjoyed his nice warm shower, grabbed his towel and searched for his room key. When he noticed its absence, he tried to map out how he would get out of his predicament.

First, he walked down to his room and tried to open the door, recognizing the futility but at the same time trying just to know he had given it a chance. After accepting he would not get in his room, he knocked on a neighbor’s door.

“I asked someone if I could borrow a coat,” he said. “So I had a borrowed coat with nothing underneath, the boxers I had before my shower, my sandals and my towel.”

He wrapped himself in the wet towel and put on his borrowed coat and sandals and proceeded across the snowy space between Lake Hall and the residence office in at the Honors College to get his replacement key.

Through the cold wind and snow, he would be advised that, with his toes freezing and the rest of him not doing much better, not to misplace his key again.

Contact features reporter Nick Baker at [email protected].