Second Stairwell

The second stairwell is an indoor staircase located right in the middle of the school. It is also called the 'Middle Staircase' by some students. The second stairwell is primarily used by students whose classrooms are located in the middle of the school. For the floors two to six, the Second Stairwell leads to an area with the lift and a passage that leads to the male and female toilets. The janitor's room is also in this passage. There are also one or two small storage room(s) in this passage. The area leads out to the secondary corridor of the floor. There is a Water Dispenser next to the doorway to the area from the secondary corridor of the floor, in the secondary corridor of the floor.

## Location

The Second Stairwell is located near the middle of the school.

## Entrances and Exits

* Lower ground floor: the staircase behind the extension staircase of the Third Stairwell, next to the private road that leads to the Indoor Carpark and Outdoor Carpark
* First floor; the first-floor toilet is situated in the structure of the second stairwell, unlike other floors.
* Second floor
* Third floor
* Fourth floor
* Fifth floor
* Sixth floor
* Roof: this exit leads to the area with the corridor with the Dormitories 1–4, with a passage to the area with the lift, which has a doorway that leads to an area with a Water Dispenser, the main entrance of the Indoor Gym and a passage to the exposed part of the roof (the Art Kiln Room and E.L. Room can be accessed by doors on the side of the passage)

## Lift

The lift beside the stairwell operates between the lower ground floor and the roof, the largest range of all three lifts. However, the lift is always operating in 'Emergency Use Only' mode.

This is due to two incidents:

1. In 2015, students were allowed to take the lift, but the lift was 'abused' in usage*.* 20-30 students packed into the lift, ignoring the overload warning. The lift had been stuck on the Sixth Floor for approximately 5 minutes.
2. In 2014, some IB students decided that it would be funny to switch the lift buttons. The remapped the buttons: LG/F to R/F, G/F to 6/F, etc. Buttons outside the lift (Up and Down buttons) are also switched. The students were later caught, their fate unknown.

The incidents resulted in the lift being 'banned' for use by students. However, there are no school rules stating you must not take the lift, nor any notice inside the lift. There are several weird features of the lift:

* As stated previously, the lift regularly operates in 'Emergency Use Only' mode. Therefore, if the user is not on the same floor as the lift carriage, you cannot press the button to call the lift to your floor. The user can only 'control' the lift from the inside, which means the lift can only be used if the user is on the same floor as the lift.
* The user may only go to one destination. If the lift is going to its destination, pressing floors it already had passed will cause the lift to come to a sudden stop, before going to the new destination (i.e. the lift is heading from G/F to 6/F, it is now at 3/F and someone chooses to press 2/F, and the lift will stop).
* The user can get trapped inside the lift. Doors may cease to open, and pressing the 'Open' button will have no effect on the doors. After around 5-6 seconds, the doors may suddenly open. Janitors once got trapped for 15 minutes in 2018.
* As observed by one of the editors on 15/09/2019, when the lift arrives at 6/F, doors will 'jerk' and not open properly. During trial tests by one of our editors, the doors have a 50% chance in opening properly. Users may have to manually open the door. This has been fixed during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as one of our editors did 10 tests without the door failing once afterward.

Although it is commonly used by janitors to transport objects, it is not recommended to take the lift. All sorts of errors can arise.

However, a lot of students, especially those in Senior Secondary levels (9–12), use the lift quite often, to get from the ground floor to the fifth or the sixth floor since it is the most non-energy consuming way. An editor has successfully taken the lift 13 times without a single problem (the editor has never gone to the sixth floor with the lift).

The lift will always stop at 2/F (where it is the 'material hub' for janitors), 3/F and 6/F.

It is considered bad manner to go to your destination using the lift and leave without pressing the button to 'send' the lift back to its original position.