this is an odd sentiment. so what, you were originally pretending to give them the benefit of the doubt, but then you just gave up? so your original thought was that they were doing it on purpose for some reason? why on earth would they do that?
I suppose, I should've phrased it as
"I eventually dropped even the pretense of understanding..."
>why on earth would they do that?
Why on earth would a 19 year old male, who has never been away from home before, has likely never seen any real consequences for their behavior before, read a sign that warns them of said consequences, and still decide that those consequences are less bad than walking an extra 100 feet through a locker room?
I assume the same reason that similarly aged college males removed all of the fluorescent light tubes from the hallways of their own dorm. Or the same reason at least one of the shower drains in the dorm's men's communal bathroom was plugged with paper towels every month.
If its a new student, I get it, and I was rarely salty about people making that mistake early in a semester (It happened so frequently in September that my boss would occasionally leave the alarm off until the end of his workday for the whole month). If this was still happening in April (and it did), when that student has realistically been going past that door and through the locker room since at least January, and more likely since August, its not "autopilot".
A door in a position that invites to be opened, that makes it convenient for egress, is a door that almost always can be used for that purpose. That it's closed is irrelevant - almost all doors are almost always closed all the time; it's very unusual these days to spot doors that are even ajar, much less fully opened.
This is the default mode; for doors that beg to be used for exit to be unusuable for it, armed with alarm and/or annoyed staff member, that is unusual.
To be clear, I identify as male, and have done so my whole life. So this wasn't like "young college male sees a woman to antagonize" or "college female sees sexism everywhere", so much as "young college male somehow believes that 'alarm will sound' is just a bluff".
Whether or not that's biological in nature, or just the way 19 year old men circa 2006 were socialized, I won't speculate. But I never saw a woman open that door.