The Campus Elevators: More than a Mechanical Problem
A couple of weeks ago, I got stuck in the Brookdale elevator for over an hour. It may sound like an anxiety-inducing situation, but in reality, it was perfectly pleasant. There were three other Stern students with me. We calmly pressed the call button, informed security that we were stuck and then sat down to eat our dinners, watch Netflix and make the obligatory status posts. One might think lurching to a stop between floors nine and ten and being trapped ten floors above ground would be alarming. But reflecting on it now, the strangest part of the experience wasn’t the malfunction. It was our reaction.
I think this speaks to the overall mindset of a Stern student on the Beren Campus. We’ve been conditioned to treat unacceptable safety conditions as nothing of note. Our complacency with ever-breaking elevators is one symptom of our complacency with Stern’s elevator culture. An even more prevalent acceptance of an abnormal elevator culture happens in almost every elevator ride. Only at Stern is it socially acceptable, and even socially enforced, to be smushed against strangers in an elevator until you’re effectively immobilized. Another manifestation of the normalized irregular culture is the commonplace experience for professors to expect students to be late to class by ten minutes due specifically to “elevator traffic.” But most harmful, in my opinion, is the open shame directed at anyone who takes the elevator for just two or three floors in the 245 Lexington building and even higher thresholds in Brookdale.
I first encountered this culture before I even came to Stern. When I was a junior in high school, a then-Stern-student warned me about the tense Stern elevator culture. This was phrased matter-of-factly, while acknowledging the humor of the reality. Four years later, I’ve witnessed that comment come to life. Many of my friends have commented that they have noticed this hostile sentiment. At one point, there was even a poll taped to the Brookdale elevators asking students to vote on the lowest floor it should be acceptable to ride the elevator to. This is not to mention the severe glares openly given to those who defy this accepted custom.
Another time in high school, I was prepped for the infamous Stern elevators with a story about a student falling five floors, which was just one of the numerous instances of elevator drops and safety concerns over the years. It is routine for elevators to be out of order, and sometimes this happens multiple times a week. When was it decided that this was a normal housing situation?
Realistically, there are technical and physical constraints in the way of Stern having unproblematic elevator experiences. Three elevators serve hundreds of students within the same ten-minute windows between classes, and major construction would be a massive, perhaps impossible, undertaking. But acknowledging those limitations does not negate their consequences. Norms are only normal within their environments, and the glares and acceptance of broken elevators we accept around Beren Campus elevators would be unthinkable almost anywhere else.
We joke about it. “At least we get our steps in,” we say. We chalk it up to just another “classic Stern” moment. But at what point does taking things in stride condition us to be okay with something that is not okay? The social shaming toward others and our general complacency toward the situation are effectively displacing the merited frustration we should feel about these insufficient and inadequate facilities. The tension between students during elevator rides is due to our acceptance of the physically limited facilities.
When I was stuck in the elevator, there was a point when we lost communication with security entirely. The intercom stopped working, and we resorted to FaceTiming a friend, who then physically handed her phone to security so we could receive updates. Still, it didn’t strike me as a big deal, and twenty minutes after being freed, I got right back into the elevator again. It didn’t even take a full day for me to forget about the experience entirely, until others brought it up to me.
If being stuck in an elevator for over an hour without communication, despite documented safety failures, feels normal, what else have we stopped questioning? What other dysfunctions have we quietly learned to live with because we have ceased to expect anything more? Good humor and taking things lightly can be effective coping mechanisms, but when that acceptance propagates interpersonal resentment between students and upholds a status quo of compliance in unsafe conditions, they stop being harmless.
Photo caption: Passenger elevator
Photo credit: Pixabay / Kaisender
