Author: Ella Fornari
Occidental students bring great diversity to campus with respect to their cultural mannerisms. When their differences in common door holding courtesy collide, we get the anarchy that is the Marketplace doors.
There are three easily identifiable types of door-holders at the Marketplace:
1 – The “standard door-holders,” who are committed to opening the door for themselves only to then quickly pass the responsibility to the next student.
2 – The “slider,” who secretly believes they are exempt from responsibility, acting like all who hold doors hold them specifically for them. The slider avoids confrontation by not holding the door through the act of sliding on by.
3 – The “holders for eternity,” who are steadfast in making sure everyone knows how chivalrous they are, even if it makes everyone passing through the door feel weird and have to awkwardly run.
In order to allow these doors to act as functioning entrances and exits to the only truly comprehensive dining facility at Occidental, the student body must collectively agree upon a singular door-holding policy.
For the people who think they are being chivalrous by standing for ten minutes holding the door, a common protocol will probably not affect them. Let’s celebrate their supposed kindness; they want to hold the door, so who are we to tell them not to, even if their insistence on holding the door makes us feel really awkward?
The most common problem arises when the “standard door-holder” comes into contact with a “slider.” I don’t like to admit it, but I am a slider. In my defense, and in defense of sliders everywhere, I want to state that the problem is not entirely at the fault of the slider. The angle of the doors often makes it seem like “standard door-holders” are actually “holders for eternity.” This misunderstanding results in the sliding behavior: the slider walks through, then realizes the holder did not intend to be courteous, causing them to shrink their bodies, avoid eye contact and characteristically slide on by.
The student body needs to take action to solve this rampant door holding problem.
Central to this issue is that both doors are singular and open out to the patio. Since the push feature of the door is on the inside, the person exiting the Marketplace is in a position of power, as they physically move to the side of the door when pushing it open. In this way, both doors are actually exits.
Occidental must take action to ensure one door is a designated entrance while the other a designated exit. Because the push side of the door establishes whether the door is an entrance or exit, one of these doors must be flipped. If the reason why both doors push outside is related to fire codes, then perhaps signs will suffice.
At Occidental we celebrate diversity, and part of cherishing this diversity is accepting that people have different door-holding customs. So, in the spirit of relativism, let’s establish which door shall grant access into and which shall grant exit from the marketplace.
Ella Fornari is a sophomore Media Arts and Culture Major. She can be reached at fornari@oxy.edu or on Twitter at @WklyEFornari.
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