a northeastern rooftop access guide. 
 
- dodge hall. requires picking two doors: one to an upper maintenance area, and another to a rooftop. the upper maintenance area is pretty sketchy, and I highly recommend bringing a mask. the roof is pretty sketchy and there's no barriers, so proceed with a ton of caution. 
- ell hall. door to the roof is directly adjacent to the stairs. requires picking three locks; after you pick the first lock, you'll enter a really sketchy maintenance area. when i last went the maintenance area's light didn't work, so it helped to have a friend with a phone light. you get direct access to northeastern's big ass American flag, so that's cool. 
- richards hall. go up the elevator to the top, make a left, then another immediate left, and go through the double doors. you'll need to pick the lock to the wooden door. from here you'll enter another sussy maintenance area. from here, you can just slide out the window, or you can pick the second lock. really nice view of krenztman and huntington ave.  
- mugar. just one door to get onto the roof. the roof layout is super intricate and fun to navigate. there's tons of cooling systems, pumps, etc for mugar's many bio-type labs (afaik the axolotl lab is in mugar)
- hayden. this roof is relatively active, since the wireless club directly manages antenna equipment on this roof. you can either pick the single roof door lock to get onto the roof, or just go through a window in the wireless club. the view here is great, and i've spent a lot of time reading here.
- forsyth. I had to pick three locks to get onto the forsyth roof; one to get into the smile lab on the second floor, one to get into a maintenance area, and a final lock to get onto a roof. this roof is pretty big, but it's kinda boring since it's low to the ground.
- meserve/holmes/lake/nightingale. My favorite roof, and my first roof! This roof has like a million access doors, but I suggest you go to the end of merserve hall, go up the stairs, and pick that lock. This roof is huge and fun to explore. I suggest you walk around to nightingale, all the way to the upper right tip. The view of Northeastern, and downtown Boston is fucking awesome.
- dana/snell engineering. There are several doors to get onto the roof, but I suggest going through snell. Dana has this weird tall maintenance area you can access via picking, or you can get on top of via a pretty tall ladder. 
- curry. You'll need to go to the top of curry's stairwells to get roof access. The lock is super sus to pick, so make sure you're going on the weekend past ~2am ish. You can go around the lower level of the curry rooftop, or you can take some stairs to this huge, wide, flat section of the curry roof. You get a nice view of the wireless club antenna, and of snell.
- snell. In the stairwell leading down to the tunnels and snell basement classrooms, just take the stairs all the way up to the top. This rooftop door is alarmed, so pick at your own risk! I set the alarm off once, and made a run for it.
- ryder. FWIW my friend was the one who took me, but if you take the stairs all the way up and enter the maintenance room, you'll be able to just go out a window onto the roof. You get a really nice view of centennial here.
- behrakis. Take the elevator all the way up, and go up the stairs. You'll need to pick three locks; one into an elevator lobby, one into the maintenance room, and the last to get onto a roof. For whatever reason, I wasn't able to pick the lock to get into the elevator lobby, and I had to ask my friend to use his under-the-door tool for it. The maintenance area in behrakis is HUGE and super fun to explore. I found schematics of several of northeastern's buildings, architectural details, and other maintenance tidbits. You can either go onto the roof via side-door, or take the latter and go all the way to the top. The side-door is super sketch, but the view is awesome. The complete rooftop view is fucking incredible, BTW. It's really sus picking a lock on a ladder, but damn is it worth it.
- west village. all alarmed, don't even try it. 
- ISEC. alarmed as fuck. 
- EXP. I had a buddy break onto this rooftop during construction, which is fucking insane. Otherwise they have a nice rooftop balcony, so I don't see the point in going onto this rooftop TBH.
 
other notes:
- i generally suggest go on the weekends, at night time, past ~2am. The maintenance workers at northeastern always work through the night, so if you go during a week day you'll need to play metal gear solid and avoid them.
- In most of the "best" branded locks used at Northeastern, the first pin is almost always a safety. Also, because the locks used have both an "unlock" state and a "control" state, you'll almost never need to push a pin all the way up to get the unlock. 
- not hit yet: Egan, Hurtig, East Village, Robinson, Shillman, Karitos, Stearns, Cargill. Alarmed: West Village, ISEC, EXP, Snell.
- I took friends onto a rooftop during the eclipse in Boston, and it was fucking awesome.
- you can access the tunnels 24/7 by giving the forsyth double doors a good yank