Grow up! Why reckless behavior ruins the party for everyone

The other week I received a text message from a friend asking me if I knew where her oven knobs were. She had hosted a party the previous weekend and had woken up to discover that her oven knobs were missing, so she was asking everyone who attended if they might know what had become of them.

In case you were wondering, I have no idea where they went. Sadly, this isn’t a unique problem. Vandalism and theft are commonplace at college parties.

What better proof of a great night as the life of the party than a stolen bottle of tequila or battered oven knobs? My freshman year, some boys on my floor came back with door hinges they’d ripped off a door at a frat party as mementoes of their wild and crazy night out.

Cool story, bro.

For every drunken souvenir, every token of that wild night, there is someone else who has to pay the price. Someone has to paint over the Borat quotes you scrawled on a living room wall and replace the toilet plunger that you stole and pretended was your scepter for the night. Things like this can be costly, especially for perpetually broke college students who have to choose between extra groceries or a night spent at Hemingway’s.

These party pranks are problematic for several reasons. First off, stolen goods or vandalized walls are never as cool as you think they are. Flashing stolen oven knobs to a bunch of girls you meet at Sorrento’s isn’t impressive. It’s lame.

Stealing party souvenirs is like buying a car: Their value depreciates exponentially as soon as you leave the lot (or in this case, the party), and their value continues to decrease with every passing hour. Maybe you’ll get a few chuckles and smiles when flashing your wares that same night, and in the morning, you may get a few smirks and bulging eyes. But the next night no one will care about the family picture you stole from a stranger’s house party.

There are going to be newer, better stories to replace yours within 24 hours, and while stolen oven knobs, door hinges and family photos are sitting forgotten on your dresser, the people you stole from are worrying about how to replace them. Your enjoyment from the incident is much shorter-lived than the repercussions the other person has to face.

Another problem is how truly disrespectful these actions are. The host was kind enough to invite you into his or her home, or at least allow you through the threshold if you showed up uninvited. Therefore, stealing from the host is exploiting his or her hospitality. Sometimes damage is inevitable at parties — walls and windows do get broken from time to time — but purposeful theft and vandalization is unnecessary destruction.

The end result is that the host is no longer going to throw parties, and no party-goer wants that. Now you’re just ruining the fun for everyone else.

Stealing from people for kicks and giggles is also immature — not that college house parties are the pinnacle of class and maturity by any means — but hiding all the forks in your house so your mother can’t feed you broccoli at dinner is a kindergarten move. Is that really so different than stealing oven knobs? I don’t think so.

Being respectful and mature doesn’t mean that the party has to be any less fun, it just means that there should be less damage and mess for the host to clean up in the morning.

There are other ways to get party tokens instead of stealing. Go ahead and take selfies galore or take a video of your sick dance moves that never make an appearance during daylight hours. Good dance moves are always more impressive than stolen kitchen wares and make for much better memories.

As they say in many parks, take only pictures and leave only footprints. However, if you’re leaving footprints at a party, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what you stepped in. You can keep that one to yourself.

Write to Channing at clk87@pitt.edu.