Tina Tehrani
Senior Editor
You are on the second floor walking down a hallway. The following is on your right hand side: The Wagner Room, two fountains, four bathrooms, and two classrooms (rooms 231 & 232). You pause. There is a long door that has a rectangular window embed vertically into the door. There is a sign next to the door that has a handicap symbol with the following words underneath it, “Stair/Area of refuge.” You peak through the window and see the “warm room.”
As you push open the door and enter you see a heater on your left hand side. Sometimes there is a chair that is present but then vanishes and comes back. As you begin to move forward you see a fire alarm. As you’re slowly walking you approach three things: a metal sign that reads, “For Assistance Push 3-Inch Help Button,” with Braille writing on the bottom. Another metal sign next to it has a “Push For Help Button” with two flashing buttons that blink if they receive your response. Next to these two signs is a fire alarm puller.
Once you’ve read these signs you descend down the twenty-four steps with an exit sign and a video camera overlooking you (there are five video cameras in the room). If you turn right at the bottom of the steps you are taken down a pathway with a double-door on your left. The five exit signs in the “warm room” point into this direction because if you open the doors you are automatically outside the back of the school.
If you turn left at the bottom of the steps instead of turning right you notice doors that are specifically for the custodians. There is a small sign that says “Maintenance” next to the double doors. Inside the room are the “hallway zambonis” that the custodians ride on to clean the NCHS floors after school. Inside the “Maintenance” room is an office for custodians and supplies. Once you leave that room you begin your journey and take a left from the maintenance room. You go down a mini hallway and open the double doors. You are now in the long hallway that connects part of the lounge and world language hallway to the tech and arts hallway. You can enter the “warm room” from either the second floor or from the bottom.
One of the creators, junior Anastasia Green,* explains how this place is different from all of the other “hang out spots.” “The ‘warm room’ is different,” she said. “You can meet people from different kinds of cliques into one clique. It’s a place you can hang out [but we’re anti-clique]. You don’t have to talk to one person you can talk to other people. Anyone who wants to hang out here can. We’re like a small family.”
A lot of the students who hang out there were hesitant to let me interview them because they don’t want students to bother them. They created a quiet place for students to hang out with other students. With all of the subcultures I’ve visited, I feel that this spot is probably the most secretive. Everyone is welcomed to this place, as long as they follow the guidelines.
There are specific rules that apply to the “warm room”. Anastasia explained. “We have unspoken rules,” she said. “We all agree that a person can come in here only if they get along with other people, don’t litter, and aren’t just here to annoy us.”
A former NCHS graduate created the “warm room” about four years ago. Most of the people who hang out here only go into the “warm room” during lunch, but sometimes come during their frees as well. They created the nickname the “warm room” because there is a heater that gives off warm air on the top floor where everyone sits.
Junior Dorothy Martin* explained her reasons for sitting in the “warm room.” “I like sitting here better than the cafeteria because [in there]there are too many people and it’s crowded,” she said. “The cafeteria has random people you don’t know and you can’t find your friends. It’s much roomier in here.”
When asking about whether or not anyone from the “warm room” is disrespected by any other students Dorothy responded anecdotally. “I remember freshman kids would walk down just to stare at us and make fun of us while were sitting,” she said. “If they joke with us we will joke back. People may think we’re strange here but we’re not.”
*Names have been changed
Next Issue: The Spiral Staircase
