Last segment on The Administration: Exposed, we revealed the most scandalous secrets about our very own Jorge. If you have not read the story, the link to the shocking details can be found here.
This installation on The Administration: Exposed, I will uncover the mysterious ticking of the on campus bell.
“The bells don’t seem to run on the clock, lately. Sometimes it will ring to mark the hour a few minutes before the hour,” said Abby Baker ’19. As you may have noticed within the past semester, the clock tower bell has been ringing at odd times, ringing at strange melodic intervals, or not ringing at all. When does the bell ring? Every 15 minutes? What ring does it do? What’s going on, and what time is it?
These are all valid questions and so I took to the student population to find the answer. One student, class of 2019, who requested to remain anonymous, claimed that the bell intervals were, “a good riddle.” Indeed they are, anonymous student. Another student says, “Do they ring every 15 minutes? Or every half hour? Or the 15 and then the 45 and then the hour, but not on the half hour. That’s just my sense of it.” Interestingly, there is no clear consensus about when the bell rings, which makes this story even more mysterious.
If you ask any resident in Pearsons, they will tell you that at the beginning of the academic year, the bell would ring a little melody, then chimed the hour. For example, if it were one o’clock, the bell would do the little melody, then ring once, if it were eight, it would do the little melody, then chim eight times. However, the bell now, mysteriously not only chims on the hour, but at strange intervals between the hour. According to Daily Life at Mount Holyoke, the bells were said to chime “Every 15 minutes […] to announce the next activity.” However, this begs the question: is this still observed? It is also interesting to notice that now, the bell actually chimes the hour over the little melody. This is truly a mysterious.
Another anonymous student states that, “It sounds like it’s supposed to be every quarter […] But then… it doesn’t?” This is true, questionable source, it does sound like it’s supposed to be every quarter. This could be argued that this was the case in the beginning of the first semester here, however, what could explain the drastic syncopation now? The chiming is simply off, and it seems as if there is no structure to how the bell rings, as it did in the first semester. Now, the little melody is not played far nor wide, only at the odd moments. When the little melody is played, the “bass tone is off beat,” said Shion Kubota ’19.
As an investigation is concerned, there are no plausible theories for why the clock tower bell has been irregular, but I can assure the student body, the bell conspiracy is not over yet.
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