Last Monday morning, the UNT Dean’s Office put out an official bulletin asking that the student body stop entering THE HALLWAY, citing concerns over student safety. THE HALLWAY mysteriously appeared within the Sycamore Hall library last month, with security camera footage showing it simply manifesting into the Library’s outer wall between video frames. Doubly mysterious is its length, THE HALLWAY seems to go on infinitely, or at least, beyond what the human eye can perceive, despite leading directly to what should be the outside. These peculiar qualities have led to no shortage of interest in THE HALLWAY, with the viral Internet trend #explorethehallway encouraging students to simply “walk in and see what’s back there”. Most infamously, this led to the case of Carl Vanderbilt, who posted his descent into THE HALLWAY on YouTube. His last video was posted 3 days after his entry into the anomaly, which shows a visibly haggard Vanderbilt rambling to the camera, “I ran out of rations 2 days ago” he half-weeps “I tried to turn around and leave, but it just keeps going”. Unfortunately, Carl Vanderbilt was never seen again, and he is not the only case. Up to 200 students have gone missing in the last month, all of them last seen simply walking into THE HALLWAY, prompting the UNT Dean’s office to request a halt on travel into it. “We appreciate a spirit of adventure in our students,” the bulletin says “but the loss of life brought on by THE HALLWAY is simply too much to tolerate”
Surprisingly, this bulletin has been met with a flood of controversy. The day after the bulletin was released, a crowd of students gathered in the Sycamore Hall Library in protest of the “tyrannical” decree from the UNT administration. The demonstration caused quite a ruckus, only ending when all 498 students involved in the protest charged into THE HALLWAY as one group. Ashley Andrews, a freshman, had this to say regarding the protest. “I totally get why they did that, I mean, THE HALLWAY rules. It’s so, like, loving. Whenever I stand in front of it, I feel like it really wants me around. Sometimes, if I listen close enough, I can even hear it sing to me”
When asked how they plan to enforce the administration’s travel ban, Campus Police representative Marvin Yates said “Well, anybody we send to guard the damn thing just walks in, and anytime we try to wall it off the blockage either gets torn down by one of its worshippers or just disappears over night, so our current plans are ‘do jackshit’ and ‘pray to Jesus THE HALLWAY doesn’t get hungrier’”
