Residence hall memories filled with vandalism, trash

I remember how they used to have the toilet paper sitting out where anyone could get to it,… I remember how they used to have the toilet paper sitting out where anyone could get to it, so it was nice and convenient for all who lived in one of the dorms that has private bathrooms. We could just go and grab a couple of rolls whenever we needed to, no fuss.

Then, one night someone got the excellent idea to make what I am going to call a “TP waterfall” in the stairwell. I don’t really know how this seemed like a good idea, but apparently it did, because this person managed to cascade about 15 rolls of toilet paper down the stairs, where they stayed for about a week until the housekeepers decided to clean them up. Oh, and now whenever we want toilet paper, we have to go and ask our RA for it, who will suspiciously hand out two or three rolls, as if we’re immediately going to turn around and blanket the lounge in white cottony tissue. Personally, I love being just shy of 20 years old and being forced to ask for toilet paper. It’s a nice regression to when I was, what, 3?

This is just one example of far too many complaints that I have about dorm life. I’d compare it to living in the primate house in the Pittsburgh Zoo, but frankly I don’t want to insult the monkeys.

There was the time that my floor-mates decided it would be a great idea to play soccer in the hallway at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday and use neighbors’ doors as the goals. There was the time a guy down the hall thought it would be tons of fun to rip down every single dry-erase board people had put on their doors, all the while screaming “I want to go rioting!” And let’s not forget the time that someone decided to throw his leftover Chinese food all over the lounge, leaving rice and decaying chicken on the floor and windows for a week because the staff refused to clean it. Really, I want to think that these incidents are the work of deranged individuals, but after so many of them, I’m left with only one conclusion.

Dorms make you stupid.

That sounds kind of harsh, so allow me to explain. Dorms have rules. We all know this. There are certain things you can and cannot do, certain times you’re supposed to do or not do them, and particular ways for getting them done. For example, if you want to have guests over from outside your dorm, you have to sign them in on a sign-in/sign-out sheet. You can have a maximum of five guests at one time, and if you want them to stay late, you can have two stay after 2 a.m., but you can only let them stay so many times before you run out of overnight visits. When your guests leave, you have to sign them back out on the same sheet you signed them in on, and they’re free to go. To most, this seems perfectly reasonable, but to anyone who has dealt with it often, it’s a pretty major hassle. Sign-out sheets get lost or disordered, security guards can be downright rude and it’s never fun to get a violation when you screw up. And that’s just one rule of many in the dorms.

So what do students do when they’re forced to obey rules? Simple: They don’t. Instead, they act out, disobey and generally behave like people with serious personality disorders. It’s the same as students thinking it’s the coolest thing ever to go out and get wasted when they’re not legal, or sneak out of the house when their parents set a curfew. There’s no real reason for the behavior, other than it’s something that someone would be pissed about, and that automatically makes it awesome.

Of course, the dorms themselves don’t exactly help the process. Students come to college as a preparation for the adult world, and expect to be treated like adults. So when the university behaves like we’re the class drop-outs and treats us accordingly, we tend to fulfill its expectations by acting out against its rules. It’s what some people refer to as a “causal loop,” where each factor causes the other. The university treats the students like idiots, so they act like idiots, so the university treats them like idiots, and so on.

I suppose the solution here would be two-fold. First, the school needs to put a little trust and faith into the behavior of the pupils. Sure, there will be the occasional acting-out, but maybe a good solution would be to have harsher punishments instead of stricter rules. After all, we don’t punish someone for robbing a bank by making everyone who enters a bank go through a security check first.

Second, we students have to act a little more responsibly ourselves. Even if you personally don’t like the no-alcohol policy or the noise rules, they’re there for a reason, and you should respect them regardless. They’re there for someone’s benefit, even if it isn’t necessarily yours. Deal with it.

Of course, reforms like this would take a lot of work and adjustment from both sides of the fence, and there’s still the present to worry about. My plan?

I’m moving off-campus.