Did you hear the one about the student who got straight A’s because his roommate committed suicide? Or the absent professor who made his students listen to his lecture on tape?If you have, you’ve been subject to an urban legend, those unsubstantiated tales of horror or downright stupidity that happen to “friends of friends who know this guy.”

Legends can be cautionary tales of flashing your headlights at gang members or star-crazed hearsay that Michael Jackson’s phone number can be found in the UPC code for Thriller.

Colleges are rife with their own urban legends spread by gullible students. The urban legend site snopes.com explains the popularity of campus legends. “Young men and women living away from home for the first time are particularly susceptible to legends that play on the unease and fear of life in a strange, new environment among unfamiliar surroundings.”

A classic college legend is that some universities can’t have sororities because local brothel laws prohibit five unrelated women living together. Another is the student who answered a midterm with “God only knows,” only to receive the response from his professor, “God gives you an A, I give you an F.”

Sac State is no exception to urban folklore. One persistent legend on our campus is that the library was built backwards by construction workers who misread the blueprints.

“I heard that on my freshman orientation,” said student Chris Morales from a bench in the library quad. The side of the library facing the quad is supposedly the backside, while the more asthetically pleasing side facing the parking lot is the originally intended front.

Pam Macas, a Library assistant, said the first time she heard this legend was from a student who heard it at orientation, but she doesn’t know where the erroneous information came from. “It’s an impossibility to build it backward because it’s an added-on building,” she said.

She says the library consists of two buildings, the north one built in the ’70s and a second south one that was completed in 1990. The newer building is the one with windows facing the parking lot.

“It’s my understanding that they didn’t put windows in the first building because it would be distracting,” she said of why the older building lacks windows.

The backward building legend is common on many college campuses to explain an odd-looking edifice. But snopes.com has yet to find an example of one built by careless blueprint reading.

Other legends circulating the campus concern the origin of the resident poultry population. “I heard it was a prank for a fraternity,” said senior George Lam.

Biology major Shirley Zafra shares another legend. She says that two semesters ago, a fellow bio major heard some eerie whispers in Humboldt Hall during an anatomy class. “They say you could hear voices in the room where they kept cadavers,” she said.

Primarily, collegiate urban legends revolve around academia.Most students will state with authority that they can leave class if a professor fails to show up within 15 minutes.

“They’ll start invoking the 15 minute rule two minutes into class,” said senior Mark Pepper of students eager to leave when an instructor is tardy.

But some students can never remember exactly how long the wait time is. “We’re always asking each other, ‘Is it 15 or 20?'” said freshman Katherine Johnson.

The closest the University Policy Manual comes to any written documentation on the rule is in the “Student Rights and Responsibilities” section under “Rights in the Classroom.” Section E states that “an effort will be made to notify students when class is not being held or when an instructor is to be late.” The rule is probably just another legend, one variation of which is that professors have different wait times depending on their tenure or degree.

Some things on campus have yet to develop their own urban legends. Pepper, an English major said some rooms in Douglass Hall smell like maple syrup.

“I’ve never heard of anyone offering an explanation on the origins of the smell,” he said.

Maybe someone should get on that.