I wrote this scene for Freshman fall quarter. It was intended to be foreshadowing of Jim’s problems with campus security and certain other police forces, but was cut for space reasons.
Freshmen arrived the week before classes at Bowling Green State University started for “orientation,” a chance to become acquainted with the campus. That was the Wednesday before classes began. Jim Kowalski was temporarily checked into a room on the third floor of Kohl Hall, facing the Commons complex. A number of other freshmen were also (temporarily) quartered on the third floor, as well.
Jim had known from his campus visit the previous spring the size and layout of a dorm room in Kohl Hall, where Bert Schmidt and he would live that year. The university-provided furniture consisted of two beds, two desks, two chairs, two wall-mounted bookshelves, and two dressers. There were two closets for storage. Each room also had a wall-mounted telephone, which could be used for on-campus, local, and long distance phone calls. (On-campus and local calls were free, but long distance calls were handled by the local telephone company, which would send monthly bills for such calls.) The beds could be bunked, and the hall would provide the necessary hardware for doing that on request.
Orientation was exactly that: a chance for new students to become acquainted with the BGSU campus. There were walking tours of the campus, with advice from the upperclassmen guides on things to do on campus, and an introduction to the Student Union, the library, and the campus bookstore. After listening to the guides, one would get the impression that there wasn’t a town named Bowling Green in the near vicinity — everything that a freshman could possibly want was already on campus. Incoming freshman were also warned about “Drop-Add,” or the means at that time for changing one’s class schedule from immediately before the start of a quarter through the second week into that quarter. The universal advice was to avoid Drop-Add if at all possible.
Jim had already read all the college materials that he had received earlier that summer when he visited campus and signed up for fall classes. He had nearly memorized the campus map and had an excellent sense of direction. He quickly became bored, and ditched the rest of the afternoon. Instead he met up with a young woman who introduced herself as Eve. The two decided to go see the town that evening, to make a date of it. In the meanwhile, they would take their own “walking tour” of the campus.
Eve knew all sorts of things about campus, from the almost-tame white squirrels that would take food from one’s hands (if one was patient enough), to the cemetery that was in the middle of campus, to the open sewer just to the north of the university along Poe Road, known as Poe Ditch. She was also able to point out the Wood County Airport, which greatly interested Jim. Jim and Eve enjoyed several hours of just “goofing off.”
That evening the campus was very quiet and Kohl Hall was all but deserted, when Jim stopped back briefly with his date. He intended only to drop off some things he had picked up during the day, and then the two of them would walk off campus to a restaurant that she knew. That was the plan.
Since Kohl Hall was so nearly deserted, he decided (without telling her) that it would be safer for her if he kept her with him, and he invited her up to his room. They stepped into his room, and he closed the door behind them. It only took a minute to put things away, and then he was ready to go.
But when he tried to open his door, it wouldn’t budge. The door knob would turn, but he door wouldn’t move. He made sure that the door was unlocked. Still no success. Eve groaned, and said, “They’ve pennied us in.”
“What does that mean?” asked Jim.
“There’s a flaw in the locks,” she explained. “If a few pennies are jammed into the door, it becomes impossible to open. My father has told me many times how his students played pranks on each other by doing that. It’s easy to do, and easy to fix — if you are on the outside of the door.”
Jim did a double take. “His students… your father told you?” he asked.
“Didn’t I mention it? My father’s a professor here. I live in town. That’s how I knew a good restaurant.”
Jim did a second double take. “Aren’t you a student here?”
“Oh, no. I’m only a junior in high school.”
Jim started sweating. This was bad, very bad. She was under age — sixteen, maybe even fifteen if he heard her right — and her father, as a professor, would be able to do him a world of hurt if he wanted to do so. Jim tried to open the door again, and this time he put his strength into it. The door did not move.
Well, he could call for help. But when Jim picked up the receiver on the room’s telephone, there was no dial tone. “The phone doesn’t work,” he said, and hung it up.
Jim opened the window of the dorm room. There was a window screen, but that could be easily removed, which he did. There was no one in sight. He looked down, and saw that it was a good forty foot drop to the ground. He abandoned any thought of getting out that way. Fifteen or even twenty feet he could handle. If he dropped forty feet he’d break a leg or have internal injuries — if he was lucky.
Meanwhile, Eve had picked up the telephone receiver and listened. Then she hung up the phone with her finger, released her finger, and listened again. Then she hung up the phone with its receiver and turned to Jim. She announced, “The phones have probably been disabled so you can’t make long distance calls. Not until you have your permanent room assignment.”
Jim pondered aloud, “We can’t go out the door. We can’t go out the window. The telephone doesn’t work, and there’s no one for as far as I can see. I’m open to suggestions.”
Eve shrugged, “It would be bad if there was a fire, but for now we will have to wait until we see someone, and then ask them to get us help. The campus police could have us free in a minute, once they knew.”
That’s what they did. Unfortunately, the campus seemed deserted. A couple of times, Jim thought he saw someone, but when he called out, no one came. The evening wore on.
About 3:00 a.m., Jim finally managed to get the attention of a pair of campus police officers as they were making their rounds. At first they acted as if it were all a big joke, until Eve stuck her head out the window and told them, “Will you please get us out of here? My bladder is about ready to burst…”
They took one look at her and asked, “Are you Eve Hardy?”
“Yes I am, and my father must be having conniptions. Get up here and LET US OUT!”
The door was opened in less than three minutes. Eve almost ran down the hall to a bathroom, with one of the campus police officers trying to keep up. The other one got on his radio and called dispatch and informed her that Eve had been found at Kohl Hall on the third floor. Then he got in Jim’s face and demanded, “What did you do to her?”
Jim held his temper. “We were pennied in. You just opened the door yourself. I didn’t do a thing to her. When she gets back she can tell you herself. We’ve been trying to attract your attention for hours.”
“Don’t get smart with me. I asked you what you did to her. Tell me!”
From the open door Eve said pointedly, “Are you deaf? He was a perfect gentleman. He never even so much as touched me. Get me to a working telephone so I can call my father.”
The officer spoke to Eve, “He’s being informed as we speak. Nobody’s going anywhere until we get to the bottom of this.”
Within a few seconds more campus police officers had arrived on the scene. One of them was a woman. She put her hand on Eve’s hand and said, “You don’t have to be afraid any more, honey. Tell us what he did to you.”
Jim was controlling his temper, but Eve was close to losing hers. She looked at each of the officers in turn, and said, “Is there anyone here who speaks English as his or her first language? Jim here was a total gentleman, and he didn’t so much as touch me. We stepped in for just a minute so he could drop off some things, and we were pennied in. We’ve spent the last seven hours trying to attract somebody’s, anybody’s attention. WHERE WERE YOU?”
The woman campus police officer picked up her radio and called dispatch. She said, “Send a car to the back of Kohl Hall. We’ll be taking Eve Hardy to Wood County Hospital. Inform them to prepare a rape kit, and let her father know what’s happening when he arrives.”
Eve turned white. “A rape kit? Are you deaf, too? I will not submit to this invasion of my privacy.”
There was a hint of steel in the campus police woman’s reply. “You have no choice. You are underage, you have been reported missing for several hours, and you have been found with a man in a locked room. If you’re telling the truth, all this goes away. Otherwise we have to treat this as a kidnapping and rape.”
Eve went off in a car with the woman officer, and Jim, surrounded by the remaining campus police officers, went to campus police headquarters (only a half-a-minute walk) to fill out a report. In less than an hour, the results came back from Eve’s exam, and they let Jim go, without apologizing to him. Typical cops, he thought to himself.
Copyright (c)2016, Philip Hair. All rights reserved.