Dumpster diving? 6 Nov 2012

On my second day of work, I thought I'd venture through campus rather than around. It's a bit of a maze made out of a crazy mix of aged, new, and half-new buildings, not unlike university campuses in the US. But this was a puzzler:

In the middle of campus, next to what seemed to be a lecture hall, a huge group of students was waiting around. Occasionally a few of them would go into what looked to me like a giant dumpster. The kind that they use for scrap metal at Oshtemo dump day, or what I thought I would need to get moved out of my parents' place, or what will sit in the yard at my parents' house when they are dead and I am cleaning out the house. (The parents and I have already discussed this.) Anyway, the students always came out of the dumpster... and they looked lighter, somehow. Then I remembered:

It's exam month at University of Melbourne. So all those kids were queuing up for an exam and dropping their bags off in the dumpster because they weren't allowed to bring them into the test. The dumpster even had little cubbie hole shelves built in for bags. Pretty ingenious, assuming they get their bags back after. Differently ingenious if you're the guy with the dumpster moving truck, a blow torch, and a penchant for larceny. Although I think it would be difficult to sneak off with a 20' container.