Have any friends in house 2? Well if you do, don’t plan on visiting them anytime soon. That’s right, as of last Tuesday, House 2 has lost their visitation rights for one full month.
As a community, on top of losing visitation rights, House 2 is also being charged $775. These fines are for mud found on the sinks, stairwells, and mirrors, a fire alarm being pulled and the time and suffering it took Public Safety to turn it off, and a pair of women’s underwear being attached to an exit sign. Added to this list is also fines for signs and posters being ripped down off of walls, obscene gestures drawn on posters, the front door being propped at least eight times, and my personal favorite, laundry being on the laundry room floor and the time and effort it will take the cleaning ladies to clean the clothes up. Are you kidding me? Do we not pay enough money to go to this school that we have to pay extra for cleaning ladies to clean, and for Public Safety to do their job?
I am a resident of House 2, and I respectively must say that this “punishment” for the whole house is absolutely ridiculous. My parents sent me to school to get an education, but to also interact with new people, make new friends, and enjoy myself. Now that I am grounded from having friends over, I don’t feel as if I can do what I was sent here to do. I am astonished by the fact that this school can take my visitor privileges away because other residents and visitors decided to act like they are five years old and do childish things. It is not my fault that some residents forgot how old they are, or that they neglected that fact that this school is more on the strict side, but for some reason, I am being punished for it.
I walk down my hallway to go to my room, and I see comments like “I come to college for more freedom, yet I have more privileges at home,” written on dry erase boards. Is this not the complete truth? I feel like I am living in a prison, able to leave when I want, but unable to come back as a college student with rights.
At my house meeting, when I found out these terrible truths, I was told that since we live as a community, we should be punished as a community. What angers me the most about this is that I had nothing to do with any one of these incidents, nor did about 90 percent of the house. I can only ponder what went through my RD’s head when he decided that this punishment was suitable. He told us that the only way we have a chance at receiving our visitor privileges back is if we tell on the people who did the acts, or if they come forward. I know that since I have been able to talk, my mother has always taught me that telling on people is completely wrong, and rude, unless not telling would result in serious injury or death. So basically, this school has asked me to take the values instilled in me by my parents, forget them, and live by what this school says is right. I honestly think by my RD asking the residents to rat people out is acting very cowardly, and a way to find out what went wrong the easy way – having other people do his job.
I will be the first to say that the events that happened in House 2 were very childish and uncalled for. I think that the people who performed the acts had the guts to put all the residents privileges in jeopardy, so therefor they should have the guts to tell the truth and relieve everyone else from this avoidable situation. Until these people fess up to what they did wrong, I have no power to change the restrictions set upon me. For future references to anyone living on this campus, you obviously have no power to change something you feel is unjust. All you can do is sit back and watch your rights be taken away from you. That is at least what happened to me.
