Every Columbia student knows that, if you pull a low number in the housing lottery, you’re on a one-way trip to McCain McBain Hall, the worst dormitory in the University.

Seriously, McBain epitomizes third-world housing: the rooms are a notch below closet-sized, the decor is rustic and the inhabitants often devolve into a primal state as the semester progresses. Worst of all, your friends will never, ever visit you.

That all said, McBain saw not one, but two incidents over the weekend: a false alarm evacuation and a small-scale biblical flood.

The Spectator reports:

E. Anderson, a security guard who stood in the lobby while students were allowed to re-enter the building at 3:05 a.m., confirmed that the havoc was the result of someone tampering with an extinguisher on the sixth floor. Carpets and walls on that floor were covered with a yellow, soot-like residue afterward.

On Saturday evening, an unrelated flood occurred in the men’s restroom on the seventh floor, causing leakage on a number of floors below.

Can you imagine the residual odor left by a bathroom flood? Yuck.

Still, the greatest testament to McBain’s abysmal living conditions is that this past weekend left Columbia students willing to admit Harvard is better.

“I was at Harvard over Election Day weekend, and their dorms are amazing,” said Nathan Pak, CC ’11. “But McBain has floods and fires!”

What is the world coming to???

[Photo Credit: The BWOG]