{"id":156861,"date":"2023-09-08T11:13:46","date_gmt":"2023-09-08T15:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=156861"},"modified":"2023-09-08T16:34:13","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T20:34:13","slug":"holding-the-bates-door-open-one-rock-or-paver-or-person-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2023\/09\/08\/holding-the-bates-door-open-one-rock-or-paver-or-person-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Holding open the Bates door, one rock, paver, or person at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fran Miele \u201926 is from Forney, Texas, where the state rock isn\u2019t a rock at all but a fossil, petrified palmwood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Aug. 31, Opening Day for the Class of 2027 at Bates College \u2014 a bit more than a stone’s throw from Texas \u2014 Miele, a junior advisor for Parker Hall, had no trouble finding the right and real rock to serve a crucial purpose and fulfill a time honored Bates tradition: holding the door open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except for one day a year, Bates doors are never propped open. That one day is Opening Day, when student leaders like Miele, who are the front-line welcomers and baggage handlers, figure out creative ways to keep the Bates doors open for a steady flow of new students moving into their Bates digs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
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At Gillespie Hall, doorstops made from earthly ingredients that are both very old (a chunk of granite) and newer (concrete pavers) held open doors for the first-year students. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Meile carefully selected a piece of river stone, rounded by millions of years of water flow over and around it, from the thousands of stones that make up Parker\u2019s rock drip edge. \u201cSmooth and small enough to fit under a door, but won\u2019t roll.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over at Gillespie Hall (the residence formerly known as 280 College Street), the team had a more weighty answer to the problem, using broken pavers as a heavy door stop for one door and a large piece of granite for another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The piece of granite is a few hundred million years old. And now, suddenly, it has a new purpose. I asked Kendall Jones \u201925 Plymouth, N.H., helping out on Opening Day, about the rock, and we agreed: This rock has found its Purposeful Work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fran Miele \u201926 of Forney, Texas, displays the right rock for the job, a rounded river rock plucked from the drip edge at Parker Hall. (H. Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Over at Page Hall, we found a type of doorstop we\u2019ve never seen on Opening Day: A real rubber doorstop! Or, as Amazon calls it, the \u201cStrongest Door Stopper, Heavy Duty Door Stop Wedge Made of Premium Quality Zinc and Rubber Suits Any Door, Any Floor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quinn Hughes \u201926 of Villanova, Pa., a junior advisor in Page, gets the credit for pulling out this particular stop. \u201cIt was in my room,\u201d he shrugged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clason House, on College Street, is one of the smaller Bates residences (30 students). Sitting on the porch welcoming students were Caroline Cassell \u201924 of Woodstock, Vt., and Delaney Rankin \u201924 of Harrison, Maine, each of whom served as community advisors, and Kayla Burnham ’26 of Hartland, Vt., a cross country runner who was among many varsity athletes helping out on Opening Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Clockwise from left, Caroline Cassell \u201924 of Woodstock, Vt., Delaney Rankin \u201924 of Harrison, Maine, and Kayla Burnham ’26 of Hartland, Vt., welcome a new student through the door of Clason House, held open with a bucket of ice melt. (H. Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

They had given some off-season purpose to a winter staple at Bates, a bucket of ice melt, this version comprising environmentally friendly potash, urea, and crushed limestone, safe for both lawns and gardens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Folks at Adams Hall had perhaps the priciest door stop, a fold-up hand truck that will burn a $100 hole in your wallet on retail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Alexis Gonzales \u201826 of Hanford, Calif., gladly took a turn holding the door open at Rand Hall. At left, Nikhil Chavda ’27 of Nottingham, N.H., who had arrived earlier in the week for cross country practice, joins the move-in crew. (H. Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At Rand Hall, the door alarms hadn\u2019t been turned off by the time students began moving in, so a permanent doorstop wasn\u2019t in the cards. So Alexis Gonzales \u201826 of Hanford, Calif., one of the residence\u2019s junior advisors, took matters into her own hands by holding the door open. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou get to meet and welcome people this way,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students are the front-line welcomers and baggage handlers on Opening Day, and they figure out creative ways to keep the Bates doors open for a steady flow of new students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":156874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11012],"tags":[12324,11392],"class_list":["post-156861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-life","tag-class-of-2027","tag-opening-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156861"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157056,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156861\/revisions\/157056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}