Photo by: Connor Gorry
On Sunday, the Tioga residence house advisors stated that even more residents are following “elevator etiquette” after one of the two elevators was shut down in the eleven-floor building. House advisors have also
noted that they are seeing fewer residents than usual. They enlisted the help of novice investigators on campus to discover why exactly residents were no longer socializing in their respective houses, other than the normal reasons of sleeping in and playing video games while locked inside of their rooms. To their surprise, investigators found the missing students trapped in an infinite loop of stairs in the Tioga stairwell.
Investigators discovered that in most of the two floor houses of Tioga, many students did not notice the disappearance of their fellow residents. Most just assumed their roommates went home or were staying over somewhere else. Detectives found that a majority of the time, the students disregard those suitemates who they do not actively interact with.
“It’s not my responsibility to know where my suite-mates are 24/7,” one anonymous student said. “Yeah, I’ll say ‘hi’ when I see them, but that’s it. I’ve never even talked to four of them. I mean, do they even exist?”
“I only noticed many were missing because the more social residents told me that their roommates have been gone for days without a word,” an anonymous house advisor stated.
The same house advisor quickly shifted the subject, exclaiming with excitement that those still in the house have been following the “elevator etiquette,” and the house was planning a pizza party for the remaining residents in order to celebrate their compliance with the house rules.
The investigators continued to another house, only to get the same information. The only difference in this slightly higher up floor is that there were less people to question. The team told reporters they had assumed the lack of residents was due to it being week nine and had speculated that the students were studying in Geisel. Reporters were also told that while waiting for the elevator, the team encountered three first year students who appeared to quickly grow impatient with the elevator when it seemed to be taking an abnormally long time.
The students told the investigators that they heard rumors that fellow students were stuck in an infinite loop in the Tioga Hall stairwell.
“I’m tempted to take the stairs,” one of the students told investigators. “It’s not too bad if you’re going down, but I’d rather not have to, especially with weird howling noises coming from the stairwells lately.”
The team decided to take the stairs to get to the next house while the three girls waited for the elevator. Upon opening the door to the stairs, the team collided with many residents who appeared to be malnourished and exhausted. According to these students, the stairwell seemed to be under some curse that made the Tioga stairwell inescapable.
“Anyone who enters the stairs keeps walking, with seemingly no end to it,” Marc Marshal, a computer science major, stated. “You’ll be walking down by the second floor only to see that the next flight has the number 10 next to it. It just keeps going and going, until someone enters. Then someone can exit, if they are lucky enough to be by the door when it opens. I’m not sure how many are stuck here.”
The investigators, unsurprisingly, cannot explain this mystery. The team was able to send their notes on the missing student investigations as well as an SOS through an email, but the team has yet to respond to attempts of communication. School faculty is unsure whether this phenomenon will stop, but the Tioga residents are glad that the elevators will finally receive a more modern interior.
Sophia is a Design Editor at The MQ and yes she goes by her middle name. She has been a part of The MQ since the 2016-17 school year and an editor since 2017. She is a psychology major at UCSD and in her free time she plays french horn in an orchestra and wind ensemble.
