Why is the 7-9 Escalator Always Broken?!

Since the start of the school year, there have been a myriad of changes at Stuy. From the fact that students can no longer doomscroll in their passing periods—you’d be surprised how many reels one can watch in those four minutes—to the odd, nonsensical shift in… humor (if it can be called that anymore… what is a 6-7, anyway?!). However, one change has been particularly painful across the entire school population: the 7-9 escalator can’t seem to function whatsoever. The reason is unknown to most. All students know is that no matter how often the repairmen come to work endlessly to fix the problem, the escalator just keeps. On. Breaking. But why?

The investigation started when the Escalator Investigation Committee (EIC)—founded by disgruntled students after an escalator was broken for months—received numerous reports of this escalator being broken for a few days. Initially, they set cameras up around the escalator to find if some bitter soul decided to intentionally put this burden on students. However, the EIC was shocked to see absolutely nothing going on. “We initially thought it was an external problem, since it’s impossible for an escalator to be broken for that long at a time,” EIC member Eyelhuv Eskulayters said. “But now we think it’s an internal issue. For all we know, there could be a whole family of rats living inside the escalator!” What an outlandish suggestion. 

The repairmen were also questioned on why it kept breaking down, but they insisted that the electricity was faulty at higher levels. “Yeah, no, I… uhh… have no clue what’s up with it. Some kind of electricity problem. Probably no rats inside. Totally,” were their exact reassuring words. Conveniently, the electricity issue would explain why the heating is cranked up to the max on the 10th floor, no matter how hot it is outside. 

However, once staff started to (finally) notice copious amounts of cafeteria food going missing, they realized that the issue was bigger than the escalator. After all, who would be hungry enough to steal something like the off-putting cafeteria food? The soggy mystery meat and floppy fries are less than delectable. After an internal investigation of the 7-9 escalator, during which workers were hired to check the inner workings for the electrical problem, the EIC was shocked to find the answer to the broken escalator: a gigantic rat mafia residing inside. 

It was found that the rat mafia had been trafficking energy drinks to students and paying the half-floor mice to distract everyone from the rats. A full SWAT team was required to arrest each and every rat of the colony after their despicable crimes against Stuy, including scamming them for homework answers (who knew rats couldn’t do calculus?) and dealing drugs from their lockers. The leader of the colony, a rat named Rat Capone, was initially reluctant to comply with an interview, but he was quickly convinced when given a wheel of cheese. “We just needed a place to live, y’know? But then our guy at Terry’s kicked us out since they closed, and the school is right next to it,” Capone said. “The repair guys found out about us living in the escalator, but we paid them off so we could keep living there.”

It was a tragic story about a displaced, close-knit community. Therefore, the EIC chose to keep the information hidden from the public. Now, however, this information is coming to light at long last. Since there hasn’t been such a horrendous jam in a while, they decided to release previously-classified info on the case. All of the rats were released and allowed to return under the condition that they stop chewing through the wires inside the escalator. Relieved that they could stay, the rats happily obliged. This was how the November stretch of the broken 7-9 escalator thankfully concluded, though every now and then, the rats cause complete mechanical destruction during minor relapse episodes. Like that one time a rat saw someone’s Zucker’s bagel right outside the escalator and attempted to pull it in, resulting in a sticky, bagel-incited blueberry-lemon schmear. Nonetheless, the rats will always be grateful for the opportunity to have a home, even if it does sometimes result in unanimous agony within Stuy.