On a Monday morning, two days before Halloween, two Yale students were trapped. Hurricane Sandy was expected to hit New Haven that night, and extracurriculars had been cancelled for the first time in 34 years. An executive order restricted anyone from going outside. “You could get ex-commed if you stepped outside,” said Alina Sidorova, ES ’16. “Challenge accepted,” thought a small but determined contingent of freshman.

“It was kind of hilarious,” said Sidorova.

“It was such a terrifying moment,” said Sara Hamilton, ES ’16, Sidorova’s roommate and partner-in-crime that night.

“That was such a funny day,” added Michael Marcel, ES ’16, a bystander-turned-savior in the event.

The premise was safe enough. On Old Campus, the apocalyptic circumstances had spurred not despair, but kinship. Perhaps it was the impending doom of the situation; perhaps it was the relief of not having to return to classes on Monday; or perhaps it was just a last-ditch procrastination technique to stall from finishing that essay or studying for that upcoming midterm. Regardless, the freshmen living in Farnam, Lawrence, and Welch decided to throw a rager. Sidorova and Hamilton, not wanting to miss the party, thought they could snake through the connecting buildings and find a way from their third floor suite in Lawrence to first-floor of Welch without technically breaking the “no one steps outside” rule.

Sidorova and Hamilton wandered into Phelps Hall, where they saw their opportunity: the open door to the elevator that connects Phelps to Welch. They entered the elevator, ecstatic at their good fortune, and descended onto the first floor of the building. But when they tried to exit, triumphant, they realized there was, literally, no return.

“We were suddenly trapped in this tiny entryway in Phelps Hall with no way to escape except through the heavily alarmed door,” Hamilton said.

“The only way for them to come back up in the elevator was if they had ‘legal’ elevator access, which they didn’t,” Marcel explained. “Our IDs didn’t work,” Sidorova recounted. They couldn’t get back up to the third floor. They couldn’t get anywhere.

Eventually, they realized that what they needed to do: they needed to get someone to call the elevator from the third floor. Luckily, Marcel was hunkering down with some other Stilesians inside Lawrence, picked up the phone when Sidorvoa called, and rushed to the rescue.

“All I had to do was push the button to go down,” he explained of his heroic rescue, with a shrug.

A few seconds later, Sidorova and Hamilton emerged cheering and screaming. “They came out and gave me a giant hug. It was great!” Marcel said.

Looking back on it now, Sidorva admits that the moment is probably overdramatized in her mind, but all the same, it captured something essential about freshmen year on Old Campus. It was about taking stupid risks, ending up in a tiny and desolate space with no one but your closest friends, emerging somehow, through all of that, unscathed.

“We were invincible freshmen,” she said with a smile.

–Graphics by Kai Takahashi