By Morey Hershgordon
On Wednesday Sept. 9 just before 2 p.m. an unmanned car parked in the Quinnipiac University Hill Circle lot rolled and crashed into a sophomore residential hall.
Today, I spoke with one of the residents of Hill 71B who experienced it all.
Sophomore Matt Steinle is a biology major thinking about pursuing a dual minor in both chemistry and biomedical marketing. The Allamuchy, NJ native is a member of the Pre Health Professions Society and is working to become a tour guide at Quinnipiac.
Morey Hershgordon: Where were you at the time of the crash?
Matt Steinle: “In my room. My room was the room right next to it. The corner room got hit. I was sitting at my desk just doing homework and all I hear is crash! We genuinely thought our one roommate had fallen. So we went running because it was a loud crash. And he’s not there. So we’re like, ‘Where the heck is he?’ The wardrobe is turned on its side. The desk is pulled like a foot out, all the drawyers are open. And we’re like, ‘What happened?’ One of my suite mates goes, ‘Did someone just hit the building?’ We run back into my room and we open up the blinds and low and behold a car hit the building. By that time people had began to congregate and someone had called public safety. No one was hurt, thank god. No one was in the room at the time. We were very fortunate.”
MH: And when you ran outside there was no one in the car?
MS: “There was no one in the car. What I believe happened is that it was parked and it was a manual car. So I’m assuming it rolled back down, threaded between one tree and this yellow pylon.”
MH: Right down that black path?
MS: “Yeah. Yup.”
MH: Take me through your thought process when you were assigned to sleep in commons.
MS: “It was a little frustrating to be quite honest, not something we had expected. We had to move all of our stuff over. We didn’t have a time frame of when we were going to get back in or what was happening. They told us we could live in Commons or we could break up individually and live in other rooms in Hill. They gave us options, it was very generous of them and I thank them for that, but we were under the impressions that we were going to be out of our room for a decent amount of time so we’d rather stay together. We had to do what we had to do and honestly being there for a day, it wasn’t that much of a hardship.”
MH: Didn’t you feel like a freshman though?
MS: “Oh, of course. We totally felt like freshmen. When we were in there all the freshmen were coming to us asking, ‘Were you the kids that were in the room? What happened?’ Blah blah blah’ Yeah… so … got to [relive] freshman year.”
MH: But you’re in Hill with air conditioning and now you’re forced into Commons.
MS: “Haha we managed. Our fans were put to good use.”
MH: What’d you’re parents have to say?
MS: “Yeah I texted them saying, ‘You’re going to get a kick out of this. Someone just hit the building.’ My mom’s like, ‘WHAT?!?’ I explained the whole situation and they got in touch with Residential Life and they talked it through. Now that everything has settled down, they’re a lot happier.”
MH: Have you and your roommates made a joke out of this?
MS: “Yeah, initially there was a little chuckle. Like ‘Oh my god, something hit the building.’ We laughed. And then [reality set in] and it was like ‘Oh. My. God. Someone hit the building!’ But we took it in stride. Granted, we were a little frustrated, but that’s to be expected. All in all we handled it pretty well.”
MH: Have you been allowed to go back into your room?
MS: “Yeah, right after the meeting at 11 a.m. today.”
MH: Have they made any progress with construction?
MS: “They’re working on it right now. We had the meeting today and within a couple hours they have been taking care of it. They have been on top of it. They really have.”
