An Unexpected Guest

Even though the prestigious Hilton hotel in the state's capital might seem safe, it wasn't enough to keep unwanted guests out of some Hilton residents' room.

Just a few hours after falling asleep from a long day of traveling to Harrisburg, PSNE intern Elissa Hartmann woke up suddenly after hearing her hotel room's door open.

Elissa looked around, realizing that both of her fellow internship roommates were still in bed.

Elissa turned to look at me, as I had also awoken confused from the loud entrance.

A young man, who seemed in his mid 20s, was standing at the door in basketball shorts and a white T-shirt, returning the same confused look to both of us sitting up on our beds.

"Umm, I think you have the wrong room," was all I had managed to say.

Fortunately, the man simply said "Oh," and retreated from the doorway.

"It ruined my sleep," Elissa said. "I couldn't fall back asleep, and I thought it was really weird."

Chelsey Klube, our third roommate, stayed sound asleep and was glad to hear that both of her roommates had been woken up.

"We have a lot of equipment in the hotel room -- laptops, recorders, cameras -- and I know that we all have cash on us," Chelsey said. "He could have come in and helped himself to anything."

After doing some research, I found that Harrisburg has the highest violent-crime rate among all Pennsylvania cities. But it also has one of the highest number of police officers per capita of any of the state's cities. So, coming from my apartment in State College, Pa., which in 2009 was voted the safest city in America, I had never thought to prepare to protect myself.

The point is, we must always be on the lookout. Although we were fortunate enough that our unexpected visitor was probably a drunk college kid who stumbled in the wrong room, I might not be so lucky next time. Everybody makes mistakes -- and in this case a faulty Hilton keycard was at fault.

To most, it would be deemed "unacceptable" for a hotel's security system to make such a blunder -- and there is truth in such a statement. But then again, we also had forgotten to lock the door, which would have immediately prevented such an incident (and allowed Elissa a better night's sleep.) An act like this would make my mother shudder, and I'd get a slap on the wrist for being so naive.

So while our newspaper internship will continue to teach us about the new types of technology that are entering our media, we still need to rely on our human wit and never assume that computers can completely take over. We still should also keep in mind to never throw our common sense out the window.