Editor’s Note: “Stupid Questions” is a new feature in our A’E section. Every other Monday,… Editor’s Note: “Stupid Questions” is a new feature in our A’E section. Every other Monday, I’ll answer any question, no matter how ridiculous or bizarre. Want to know who General Tso’s Chicken is named for? Tso Tsongtang, Hunan province’s equivalent of our William Tecumseh Sherman. Or how about what Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix have in common? They all died at age 27. Send me an e-mail at [email protected] and put “stupid question” in the subject line. I’ll do my best to find an answer, or at least a creative excuse for why I can’t find one.

Stupid question: What is up with the door to Hillman Library’s first floor? Will it ever open?

You pass it every day, but still it remains closed. And, every now and then, you wonder why. Indeed, many have speculated that the first-floor door to Hillman Library is actually not a door at all, but a clever ruse to confuse freshmen. Others think that it is closed because the weight of any more than three people could cause the floor beneath it to collapse on unsuspecting studiers below. Still others maintain that it is a secret entrance, accessible only to the Druids, Pitt’s wannabe version of Yale’s Skull and Bones Society, minus the Joshua Jackson movie.

Sadly, the answer is more mundane. According to Pitt’s Office of Public Affairs, no one can exactly remember when the door became off-limits, but the reason is simple and twofold: safety and bureaucracy.

Apparently, the concrete tiles, which so beautifully adorn the platform around the closed door, don’t handle the cold as well as the intrepid Pitt students who walk upon them.

What happened was this: Tiny droplets of water, like many Pitt students, looked for homes in the fall. The housing office directed them to the joints between the concrete tiles, where they signed a lease and paid their security deposit. But, in the brutal frigidity of the Pittsburgh winter, the droplets in those joints froze, causing the tiles to “bridge up,” making the terrain hazardous to any student not looking where he or she was walking.

While it might not seem the most dangerous of Oakland’s many hazards, one could easily envision some stumbly, butter-toed freshman falling on his face while walking into Hillman one cold night, and his well-to-do parents then suing the school for an unprecedented eleventy billion dollars. The grounds: Pitt knew its door had unsafe tiles near it and yet had the gall to keep it open.

Ergo, we use the subterranean entrance, where the only excuses for tripping are intoxication and extreme clumsiness.

But, you ask, is there an end in sight? Will we ever be able to use the entrance as God intended us to?

Yes, says John Fedele of the Office of Public Affairs. The renovations removing the treacherous tiles and joints are scheduled for some time in “the next few years.”

Why the vagueness? Hillman is actually a state-maintained building, and, therefore, needs state funding to be freed up before said renovations can begin. If you’ve ever tried to free up funding through the Pennsylvania legislature, then you know exactly how difficult and painful that can be, relative to, say, invading Russia in the winter.

In the meantime, feel free to trip over the tiles near the door – the steps and platform surrounding it are still open. But, should you give in to the urge to sightsee from one story of elevation, bear in mind that you will, most likely, be mistaken for a confused underclassman.

As for the Druid question, all that is known is that, the last time they were spotted on a midnight march – spring of 2002 – they used the conventional basement entrance. Whether or not this was simply a diversion to hide their exclusive rights to the first-floor entrance, no one but them can say.