Fran Miele ’26 is from Forney, Texas, where the state rock isn’t a rock at all but a fossil, petrified palmwood.
On Aug. 31, Opening Day for the Class of 2027 at Bates College — a bit more than a stone’s throw from Texas — Miele, a junior advisor for Parker Hall, had no trouble finding the right and real rock to serve a crucial purpose and fulfill a time honored Bates tradition: holding the door open.
Except for one day a year, Bates doors are never propped open. That one day is Opening Day, when student leaders like Miele, who are the front-line welcomers and baggage handlers, figure out creative ways to keep the Bates doors open for a steady flow of new students moving into their Bates digs.
Meile carefully selected a piece of river stone, rounded by millions of years of water flow over and around it, from the thousands of stones that make up Parker’s rock drip edge. “Smooth and small enough to fit under a door, but won’t roll.”
Over at Gillespie Hall (the residence formerly known as 280 College Street), the team had a more weighty answer to the problem, using broken pavers as a heavy door stop for one door and a large piece of granite for another.
The piece of granite is a few hundred million years old. And now, suddenly, it has a new purpose. I asked Kendall Jones ’25 Plymouth, N.H., helping out on Opening Day, about the rock, and we agreed: This rock has found its Purposeful Work!
Over at Page Hall, we found a type of doorstop we’ve never seen on Opening Day: A real rubber doorstop! Or, as Amazon calls it, the “Strongest Door Stopper, Heavy Duty Door Stop Wedge Made of Premium Quality Zinc and Rubber Suits Any Door, Any Floor.”
Quinn Hughes ’26 of Villanova, Pa., a junior advisor in Page, gets the credit for pulling out this particular stop. “It was in my room,” he shrugged.
Clason House, on College Street, is one of the smaller Bates residences (30 students). Sitting on the porch welcoming students were Caroline Cassell ’24 of Woodstock, Vt., and Delaney Rankin ’24 of Harrison, Maine, each of whom served as community advisors, and Kayla Burnham ’26 of Hartland, Vt., a cross country runner who was among many varsity athletes helping out on Opening Day.
They had given some off-season purpose to a winter staple at Bates, a bucket of ice melt, this version comprising environmentally friendly potash, urea, and crushed limestone, safe for both lawns and gardens.
Folks at Adams Hall had perhaps the priciest door stop, a fold-up hand truck that will burn a $100 hole in your wallet on retail.
At Rand Hall, the door alarms hadn’t been turned off by the time students began moving in, so a permanent doorstop wasn’t in the cards. So Alexis Gonzales ‘26 of Hanford, Calif., one of the residence’s junior advisors, took matters into her own hands by holding the door open.
“You get to meet and welcome people this way,” she said.
Categories Student Life
