how i started a controlled fire in my dorm's kitchen

my school's dining hall does not do sunday night dinners. this means students get to be resourceful or perish. i thought i'd be resourceful and scavenge this week.

i had a strange idea to bake one of the pie crusts i bought randomly at a grocery store closing last week. i didn't have any filling, but i like the crust all by itself anyway, so the theory is good. i went to my dorm's kitchen where said crusts are stored, unwrap one, and put it in the oven.
two guys i know came in mid-bake with a frozen pizza, so we decided to split the oven. within ten minutes, my pie was done. however, since dorm kitchens are public kitchens, and collegiates plus public places often equal "devoid of anything useful due to excessive 'borrowing,'" there aren't any hot pads in the place. i'll just grab it gently with my hands, i thought wishfully. i went for it, got nervous/jumpy in mid-lift, and dropped the whole thing (but the tin) straight to the bottom of the oven. the oven is still on, due to the pizza. we can all to the math here: light pastry+ very hot metal= instantaneous smoke and very real danger of ignition.

i panicked: i tried to navigate the kitchen as if i were going to turn off the oven and pull out the pie crust from the bottom simultaneously. the two pizza guys seem very chill about all this until smoke becomes a major issue. they found a plastic bag to cover the smoke detector while i took out their pizza. i had just turned off the oven when the guys asked if they could finish their pizza before i cleaned up. "guys... if i leave it in there it will catch on fire!" "yeah, it might, but it will just burn itself out and smoke a lot, but be no big deal," they respond. i know these two have had experiences with fire alarms, so i finally gave in.(a fire alarm is not an uncommon nor well loved tradition at wheaton.)
we prepped the room for the whole ordeal--closed the door, opened the window, turned on a vent over the oven, got a saucepan full of water, turned on the a/c on high, and noted the nearest fire extinguisher. within a few moments the crust caught on fire, sending flames five or six inches high into the oven that made me freak out all over again. "guys, guys, this is bad, we should open it, we should turn the oven off...!" "no no no, it'll burn itself out, you'll see." it did, but not without sending smoke through every vent the oven had to offer.

these two guys, bless them, stayed with me till their pizza was done and the oven was off. they advised me to come back to the kitchen later so the smoke could clear and the oven could cool down. nothing could really be done till then. they were right again.
i came back and cleared a few huge chunks of char from the bottom of the oven and cleaned it as best i could. the fiasco was over, and we miraculously avoided setting off a fire alarm or even causing that much of a fuss. (i won't go into how the bottom floor of my building smelled for a little while.) however, it was at that moment, bent over the oven with a sponge from who-knows-where, i decided that februaries are hard.