They press each other up against the graffiti-scrawled, Formica-lined walls, packing themselves in more tightly than canned Vienna sausages without the necessary gelatin preservative for lubricant. They try politely, but to no avail, to keep bodily contact from becoming more intimate than a third date.

This time, the lights inside are not working. “Three please,” murmurs an anonymous voice in the darkness.

As they ascend slowly, the students begin to wonder if they should have opted for the impromptu 74-step aerobic workout to get to the third floor of the Farrison-Newton Communications Building at NCCU instead of risking a possible plummet to their deaths.

Thomas Evans, associate professor of English, remembers a time when most students did not have the luxury of complaining about a regularly broken elevator. “For a while, you had to have a key to make it work … for faculty or people who couldn’t get up the stairs,” Evans said.

Eleanor Harrington-Austin, professor of English remembers when, tired of the students breaking the lock with their own keys, “the University finally gave up and changed from lock-and-key use to regular push-button use of the elevator.”

“I hope that students might learn to follow the instructions on how many persons count as the maximum allowance for an elevator so small,” added Harrington-Austin. “Then again, faculty members late for class also feel the need to wedge our moderately — or not so moderately — chubby bodies into the already packed elevator from time to time.”

Thomas Teller has been a campus elevator specialist for NCCU for 13 years. “Anything mechanical is going to give you problems. If I see a major problem, I just go ahead and put it out of service — if it’s going to be a danger to faculty or students.”

Robert Melton, physical plant director, said that the building “is due for a comprehensive renovation.”

“Part of the comprehensive renovation will be to look at the possibility of upgrading or adding an additional elevator to the building,” said Melton.

“Unfortunately, even though we have the bond money to do things, we have a sequence and a time frame in which to do them,” said Melton.

Aside from mere inconvenience, students or faculty in wheel chairs, or with health problems, have the far more daunting task of playing catch-up for classes missed due to the unreliability of the elevator.

“I car pool three days a week [with a colleague] who had knee surgery last May, and she needs to use the elevator because it’s very hard for her even to drive,” said Michele Ware, assistant professor of English. “We come here, and half of the time we drive in and the elevator is broken.”