An uneventful cave and an eventful fire door

It's Parents' Weekend
I didn't see Hugh Hefner
But his kid goes here.

I had no parents for Parents' Weekend, so some other orphans and I hiked up to Mallory Cave. I had never been to a cave before, but this one didn't really live up to my expectations of what a proper cave should be. It was not very big, at all. No stalactites or stalagmites. No bats (then, but bats do live there) No terrible chasms waiting in the dark to swallow unsuspecting tourists whole. Really, it was a fairly small and subdued cave. The hike was fun, though, and the cave wasn't bad... I just had an overeager imagination.
Another event that culminated this week was the fire door saga.
See, each wing in Hallett is L-shaped, and halfway down one of the branches of the "L" is a fire door. Now, our hall is a friendly and sociable one, with people always hanging out in hallways or going to other people's rooms and talking, etc. Thus, this fire door was left propped open, to promote this feeling of community and friendship, and our RAs didn't care. However, the RAs from other floors take turns going on rounds through the whole building, and they did care. It was a fire hazard, they said (to leave the fire door blocked open- who would have thought?), and so they took our doorstop, and told us we had to leave it closed. (This was about a week and a half ago.) Naturally, our friendly hall resented this, and found another doorstop in the hall, and propped the door open again. The next day, the other RAs took our doorstop again. There were no more doorstops to be found in the hall, so of course people came to the only logical conclusion: take them from the Engineering Center. So they did. This propping and stealing of props continued for several days until, apparently, our floor's RAs got in a bit of trouble, and so we stopped propping the door. However, people were still unhappy about the door being closed all the time. The next logical conclusion was reached: remove the screws from the hydraulic (I think) hinge thing at the top of the door. (Not the actual hinges, but the little arm-thing with two straight parts....do you know what I'm talking about?) At any rate, the screws attaching it to the door were removed by persons unknown. Since our floor's RAs had already been talked to by the hall director about our door, and they had told us not to prop it open anymore, this didn't sit too well with them. So, the third logical conclusion was reached by one of the RAs: duct-tape the door shut until the screws were returned. For my half of the hallway, this wasn't really a problem, because the bathrooms and showers were in our half. The people in the other half, however, had to go downstairs, through the first floor hallway, and then back up the stairs. (Some in towels or bathrobes, because they were coming or going from/to the showers) Needless to say, the screws were anonymously returned in rather short order. (The duct-taping and returning of screws happened in the middle of the night, so I wasn't there, but apparently Greg (RA who taped the door) was ridiculously pissed off, and the duct-taping was a giant scene.
So, today, we had a mandatory floor meeting, where they didn't actually do as much lecturing as we expected them to. They suggested we sit in front of the door if hanging out in the hall, and that as a floor, we could invest in a magnetic-release door (like the ones at South) that would shut automatically in case of a fire (bur would be sort of pricey.) We opted for the former, the person who had taken the screws owned up to it, and everyone was happy and harmonious.

On a side note, Takako and I took the list of 100 foods and surveyed 30ish people in our hall (we did just "Which have you eaten?" rather than the "Which have you eaten, and which would you never ever eat?" of the original list.) Still, I think it's quite interesting. If other people find it interesting, I can try to figure out a way to distribute it. Does anybody know if spreadsheets can be attached to this blog? Or should I just email it to interested parties?