Interest in religious discipline underlies Cole's pursuits
Nora Beck combines art and academia
Door from Watzek leads to underworld
by Dante GoldsmithI assume you’ve heard rumors of an extensive tunnel system festering beneath the campus. Perhaps an unreliable dorm neighbor of yours recounted a drunken tale of intrigue that supposedly took place deep within one of these mythological subterranean passages.
I cannot vouch for the validity of such debaucherous stories.
I can state, however, without an ounce of uncertainty, that the tunnels do exist, and their scope is extensive.
You instantly distrust such a boastful statement as being equally unreliable, until that is, you grasp my sober and detailed account of a personal descent into the Lewis & Clark catacombs.
It began on an innocent night of curious boredom atop Palatine Hill. The tantalizing possibility of seeing the band Mourning Tuesday at the Platform for the eighth time was unpalatable to the group. One person mentioned having access to a key to the library and an interest in settling the tunnel existence debate.
Just after midnight we entered the Aubrey R. Watzek library secretly. Moments later we were in a pitch-black room deep within the bowels of the library. The only light in the room seeped from beneath an unmarked door. With our hearts beating faster, we opened the door to reveal a stairway.
The stairs led down.
The Watzek tunnel, as I refer to it, is a narrow maintenance shaft built to allow easy access to the heating, plumbing and electrical systems of the building. Enormous pipes, some heated to dangerous temperatures by the water running through them, make traversing the tunnel difficult for the inflexible.
There are lights, but these are only illuminated when maintenance workers are within the structure. Thus, flashlights prove to be invaluable.
The entrance to the tunnel in Watzek is actually a T-junction. In one direction, the tunnel leads down toward Olin. It terminates, however, where the old boiler room once stood.
A fertile tract of land now occupies this area. The steam that diligent science students have no doubt observed escaping from a non-descript metal grating represents the tunnel terminus.
In the other direction, the tunnel slopes upward to the Pamplin Sports Center. This section has a 90 degree turn which terminates within the bowels of the building. This is where we exited, through an unmarked door that every LC athlete has unknowingly passed at one time or another.
The new humanities buildings offer an equal number of similar maintenance tunnels, some even larger and better illuminated, which also terminate in Watzek.
Everyday you walk to your classes atop a wonderful cobblestone avenue of education, you tread directly above the tunnels.
You walk unknowingly past innocent doors in your dorms, gymnasium and library without the slightest knowledge of the caverns that lay just beyond.
These tunnels are a reality. They offer the adventurous a new frontier to explore. To a less noble extent they offer the inebriate denizens of this college a secret forum to celebrate their own stupidity.
These structures represent a subterranean world that extends its cavernous nature across the far reaches of the campus.
