Changes

{{Outdated}}[[Category:History]][[Category:Student Housing 2.0]]All doors to dormitories on campus are hooked into a system that tracks whether they are opened or closed, and if open, how long they have been open for. Furthermore, a signal is sent back through a network to [[Security]]’s 's main office, where an individual monitors the readout for alerts.

The door buzzer is one element of the campus security system. When a dormitory door is prevented from closing completely for more than about one minute, it sounds a loud alarm from a small speaker located next o to the door, that can be heard throughout the building. The intent is to notify any student in the dorm so that he or she will come and properly close it, because leaving a door so propped would be a security risk -- especially since a handily loud alarm alerts any passers-by with unwholesome intentions that there is a point of access open to them.

Though one can imagine that a world without door buzzers may be much worse than the world we know, it must be admitted that the average student feels more often hindered by the alarm than helped by it. The buzzer’s buzzer's benefits, after all, are passive: who knows how many crimes have been foiled by its keen vigilance? But poignant in our memories are the time we’ve we've wished to move a new couch into the dorm, or prop a door for a visiting alum, or leave access for ourselves through a one-way exit door, such as those located in the backs of [[Currier]] or [[Chadbourne]]. We might think, sometimes, that it would be a great convenience to be able to disable these suckers, if only for a short while.

Once upon a time, not long ago, there lived a student in the large double on the first floor of [[Hubbell]], the "[[HubbleHubbell House#The Hubbell Double|Hubbell Double]]" as some call it. Besides being an excellent room in location, size, and other amenities, this double has the distinct advantage of having access to a nice little patio. Now, patios on the Williams College campus are much like terraces in apartment buildings in real life: they raise the perceived value of the room significantly, even though tenants who move in typically find themselves using it for storage space, or not at all. "What a keen little terrace" they think, and they pay the extra cost for the flat, worth about half a room, and imagine the barbecuing and people-watching they'll be able to do. Alas, their grand plans rarely ever come to fruition, and so also is it on the Williams campus, where subzero weather for about 2/3 the academic year makes most not want to sit outside when they could sit inside in a warm room.

In the [[Fall 2005|Fall fall of 2005]] , a student inspired by other [[Guide_to_How-Tos#Door_Modification|"Door Mischief" articles]], wrote an article on Willipedia titled "How to Disable the Buzzing of A Propped Door." It contained advice that students in any number of buzzer-related predicaments could have used towards the common weal . . . or evil, I suppose.

The article remained in place a goodly time, but about three months and hundreds of hit hits later, its proud existence was cut short, when [[Jean Thorndike]], director of [[Security]], contacted [[Evan Miller]] '06, founder of Willipedia and head of the [[Willipedia board]] with a request to have a frank chat about the article, about which she had grown concerned about.

Though a fan of the article, in the course of this discussion Evan was persuaded that the article would have to go, and that Jean had made assurances that students with good reason to have a door disabled could have it done so by the above-board channels, which that are currently listed in this article.

And so we, who know the buzzer and its dread history imtimately, watch and wait. Is this the beginning of a new era, ushering in new cooperation between the forces of Order and the members of their protectorate, in which the pressing concerns of safety, reasonable access, and sleep will be balanced? Or are we returned to the Dark Ages, when a herald of door buzzers will sound again through the [[Purple Valley]], and, deprived of the wisdom of generations past, the people will wait for a messiah to divine again the secret of door buzzer disabling?