1. Title: The Student Trapped in the Drain
2. Informant info:
Carolyn Strauch was born on May 21, 1996, and grew up in Chicago, IL. Both of her parents are from Massachusetts. She is studying Biology and psychology as a sophomore at Dartmouth College. She is a former rower, former DDS worker, and a UGA in East Wheelock.
3. Type of Lore (Genre, Sub-genre): Verbal Lore, Legend, Urban Legend
4. Language: English
5. Country of Origin: May 14, 2016, Hanover, NH, USA
6. Social / Cultural Context:
Foco is the main student dining center on campus. Given the volume of students that make their way in and out of the dining hall every day, there is high demand for workers to make sure that the center is running as efficiently as possible. Often, DDS will hire student workers (at a pretty reasonable wage) to work alongside the full-time DDS workers in order to help them out. Naturally, students mingle with the workers and pick up on lingo, stories, legends, etc. surrounding the dining center and its workers. The following item is a legend explaining the groaning noise coming from the large drain in the kitchen.
7. Associated file (a video, audio, or image file): N/A
8. Transcript (if verbal lore):
“When working in the kitchen at Foco during the night shift, all student employees had to clean up the kitchen, dry the dishes, and prepare the workspace for the breakfast shift. Part of the clean up routine involved mopping all of the gross fallen food and liquids that collected on the floor during the day. We’re given mops and hoses…and are instructed to like push the debris towards the large drain in the middle of the kitchen called ‘the hole.’ When food is pushed into the drain, you’d always hear a deep…like groan emit from the hole. It kinda sounded like a human or dying animal or something [mimics noise]. So, the legend was that the groan from the drain wasn’t just the food being processed, but actually a student worker who had fallen into the hole years ago, back when it was much larger. The story goes that the student was alone cleaning the kitchen one night when it was storming, and the lights suddenly went out. Rather than stop, the student decided to keep cleaning. Because he couldn’t see, he slipped and fell into the hole. He yelled a ton but no one was there to help him out. Over the next few days, DDS decided that the student had drowned, and, in order to prevent an accident like this from happening again, they made the hole much smaller. After doing this, the groaning began. It was rumored that the student didn’t die, but instead was living off of the scraps of food that the workers push down there. Today, cleaning the kitchen isn’t seen exactly as cleaning up, but as a ritual to feed the student who lives at the bottom of the drain.”
9. Informant’s comments:
“Obviously I (or any of the workers) don’t think that this rumor is true, but it’s a fun way to entertain the workers and scare new employees who are gullible. I definitely think that the hole was once bigger, but I highly doubt anyone actually fell in!”
10. Collector’s comments:
Similar to the Legend of the Foco Finger, I think this urban legend serves two purposes: to entertain the workers, and to explain some common experience that all foco workers share. I do believe there is some historical context to this story, such as the hole in the ground — but I think disbelief is suspended when we are expected to believe that a student fell into a hole in foco.
11. Tags/Keywords: Foco, drain, urban legend, student, trapped
