Hey, do the Walk-Down

The fourth floor of Ballantine Hall has no classrooms.\nYet if you look closely, you can almost see a rut on the floor along a path hundreds of students follow every day.\nThe path winds from the elevators around a corner to the stairwell and down to the second and third floors of the aging building.\nStudents catch one of three elevators, ride it to the fourth floor, then walk down to their classrooms on the second and third floors.\nCall it the Ballantine Walk-Down.\nSince students can't ride Ballantine's elevators to the first three floors without a key, they have two options: Encounter the world's steepest stairs or take the elevator to the fourth, then walk down.\nAdd to that the stairs you have to walk up to get to the ground level, and admit it -- you've chosen the Walk-Down at least once.\nFor years, employees in the building have observed -- and been amused by -- the phenomenon.\nStudents share a laugh as a packed elevator empties onto the fourth floor, while professors grumble about how it clogs the elevators for those who need to get to higher floors. And mail services workers struggle to cram their carts onto packed elevators to make deliveries on time.\nThe Walk-Down was even referred to in a commencement speech last year. A graduate of IU's English department, which is located on Ballantine's fourth floor, said the department raises students' minds to the ideal, until, like Ballantine's Walk-Down, they must numb their minds to the world of work.\nBut that's too deep for a journalism major. Aren't students just being lazy?\nThat's what English Professor Nick Williams says.\n"It's an occasion for me to deplore their laziness," he says, but readily admits it's just one of many things he likes to complain about.\nInitially, elevator usage was limited because Ballantine has only three Otis lifts, but it was also assumed that students would be healthy enough to walk up a few flights of stairs.\nCarol Reitz, who works in mail services, doesn't see it that way. She says students have a lot of books to carry.\n"If they want to take the elevator to the fourth floor and walk down, more power to them," she says.\nBut the real Walk-Down payoff comes when a professor squeezes into an elevator packed with students, who are all apparently headed to the fourth floor.\nThen the professor keys three.\nAnd the students can't help but laugh as the elevator clears and they avoid the Ballantine Walk-Down.