The unthinkable happened last Thursday at Reid Campus Center when the CCEC’s escape room proved truly inescapable for three unlucky participants. Theories are floating around about the whereabouts of the missing students, motivations for the reason behind their disappearance and as to why this was an event in the first place. 

The CCEC hosted the escape room as a method of engaging Whitman students’ world-renowned critical thinking and problem solving-skills, while preparing them for the real world. The brilliance of this CCEC metaphor is evident: becoming an adult is all about parsing frustrating riddles while being surveilled 24/7 by people who delight in your frustration. 

The event was located in Reid G02, the dampest and creepiest of meeting spaces campus has to offer. One theory posits that the students may have vanished from Reid via a trap door to a place known as Reid’s Other Basement. The proof for this theory was posted by a YikYak user (Pink Coconut) who obtained a blueprint of Reid Campus Center from 2000. Construction plans display a mysterious sub-basement and tunnels, similar to those at Denver International Airport. Though a Whitman spokesperson denied these allegations, they could not answer The Wire’s questions about the logical reason for Reid’s Other Basement. Suspicious indeed.

Another student-turned-theorist suggested the CCEC escape room event was a ploy to give students the career preparation of a lifetime. Think about it: the best way to teach quick thinking, collaboration and problem solving is to lock students in a 3D puzzle with their peers for an hour and a half. Now to up the ante a bit: the students will be forced to solve their way out with nothing but their brains! That’s one hell of a resume bullet. 

With the lost students’ location still unknown after many days, the search efforts have grown tired. Resources have dwindled, and the extent of the search is just one person refreshing Find My Friends every five minutes. All of Whitman campus is hoping for the safe return of these three daring souls, wherever they may be.