It came to my attention this week, via an invitation from BGSU in my inbox, that Rodgers Hall and the two adjacent frat houses are being torn down to make way for a more modern dormitory.
In memory and in honor of the dorm where I lived during the Spring Semester of 1996, I will be posting photos and journal entries, along with remembered stories from my time in Rodgers Hall.
3 Feb 96 – Saturday – 4PM
Yesterday afternoon there was a fire in the East Wing of Rodgers. Some chic had a candle sitting on a recliner & set it aflame.
Night before, Mary was pounding to the wall to quiet our neighbors and sent my NA [Northern Aurora Drum & Bugle Corps] picture crashing down onto my nose — it bled for half an hour + is still swollen.
These stories both deserve exposition, as they’re two of the more memorable and classic moments from my time in Rodgers.
The dorm fire happened late on a Friday afternoon, or early evening. I was getting ready to go to a weekend drum corps camp in Saginaw, and was lucky to have gotten my gear out of the building before the Powers That Be evacuated the building and locked the doors. (We never made it to the camp, and ended up back at the dorm late that night, but that’s a story for another day.)
Turned out that a female resident had a candle burning in her room (which was against policy, for the record), and was curled up in a chair with a stadium blanket. She left the candle burning while she went to use the bathroom, and by the time she returned, the candle was smoldering and burning the blanket she’d accidentally thrown on top of it. Luckily for me and my roommate, Mary, the fire was in the East Wing, and we lived in the South Wing, so nothing of ours was damaged. The whole dorm smelled pretty funky for a while, though.
As for my nosebleed… Our next-door neighbor in Rodgers had a boyfriend. At least, we assumed he was a boyfriend. Maybe he was just a fuck-friend, since that’s what they did. A lot.
The first few times, it was amusing. We’d put our ears to the wall and listen — because, really, the sounds of other people fucking can be pretty funny. It’s not so funny, though, when it keeps you awake on a school night. So, to shut them up, Mary was pounding on the wall. Multiple times. Very hard.
So hard, in fact, that the photo propped on the wall above my bed worked its way off of the shelf and fell, landing on my nose in the dark. Not only that, but it landed on one corner, all the weight of a fairly hefty wood and glass frame causing the second nosebleed I’d ever had in my life.
Ironically enough, THAT got them to stop fucking.