“The building’s open; the south end”

“The building’s open; the south end,” said President Farvardin to clearly not-a-student outside of Morton on Monday. Naturally, I wanted to see the new building, especially after I received an email last week announcing the partial opening of the Gateway Academic Center.

Avoiding the allegedly “confrontational” ladies on the first floor of the building preventing exploration — at around noon on Tuesday they were no where to be found — I went around to explore the building, and it was wonderful.

Everything within the South Hall of the Gateway Academic Center was modern. The first floor of the building was filled with light and convenient study spots. The second floor had similarly light-filled study spots. The third and fourth floors remained mainly unfinished, but the Computer Science Department already had a cozy lounge installed.

The opening of Gateway gave me a new area of campus to explore — an area that I had I never stepped onto. During orientation my freshman year, I remember trying to find every little nook and cranny of every building on campus. At around 11 p.m., a few friends and myself went to explore the MPK Complex as we didn’t have a single orientation event in there, and we wanted to see what the building looked like. After finding and trying every door to the complex, we found the one door that was still unlocked: the door to Morton on the path to River between the buildings. We climbed the two flights of stairs, reached the top floor of Morton, and then walked over to the skybridge between Morton and Peirce and looked outside the window to the city skyline. It was beautiful.

As pretentious as it sounds, the view of the city skyline from campus isn’t anything unique — and wasn’t to me at the beginning of my freshman year either. I’d seen the skyline during my tour of campus before I applied to Stevens and was amazed then. It wasn’t even my first time looking at the skyline at night; I hung out with someone at Castle Point during the first night of orientation. Heck, I even had a “view” of the city from my dorm room in Davis.

However, when I looked outside the window in Morton, I found a special view. It wasn’t a view that was “advertised” on campus tours or on the website; it was a view that I found on my own — through exploring and finding out what exactly what hidden on this campus. I wanted to keep exploring places of campus — and see what else I could find.

A few weeks later, my friend told a group of us that the door to the roof of the Howe Center was “unlocked and unalarmed.” Obviously without arising suspicion, eight of us piled into an elevator in the Howe Center after midnight, rode it to the 13th floor, and climbed the last two flights of the stairs to reach the roof. We opened the door and took in the sight. My jaw dropped. It was amazing. We could see the starlit sky towards the city, or miles deeper into New Jersey. I walked around taking in the view from every angle.

Then Campus Police came up to the roof and told us to get the heck off the roof immediately. Whoops. That ended the exploration surge.

I’ve found smaller “hidden” areas since then, but nothing as spectacular. The campus has a lot of little “small” secret areas that are great to explore and have beautiful views. With all the flack we give Stevens, it doesn’t lack wonderful spaces to explore — even student organizations can’t explore together in Gateway after 10 p.m. Thanks Hoboken residents; we appreciate you.