Famous Last Word: Struggling with the residence halls and cell block walls

I have had to live in the residence halls for the three and a half years I have been at Seton Hill University (SHU). It has been my home, and I’ve written about that before. I have written about how Residence Life policies have changed over the years. I’ve asked many questions, but there are still some topics of discussion that I cannot grasp. There are also several things that other students do to each other in the halls that I don’t comprehend. Many of my fellow residents here cannot understand some of these things either.

Andrea Perkins

Senior Staff Writer

I have had to live in the residence halls for the three and a half years I have been at Seton Hill University (SHU). It has been my home, and I’ve written about that before. I have written about how Residence Life policies have changed over the years. I’ve asked many questions, but there are still some topics of discussion that I cannot grasp. There are also several things that other students do to each other in the halls that I don’t comprehend. Many of my fellow residents here cannot understand some of these things either.

One such item for discussion is the fact that room and board prices keep increasing. That’s not necessarily a Residence Life policy, but it’s an administrative policy that many students find frustrating. It is not like our rooms are appreciating in value. While it is true that we are slowly getting new furniture, the carpets in many rooms are still stained and nasty and the furniture in some residence halls are still uncomfortable and awkward.

Recently, we have had several more changes to the room inspection policies. I remember we were okay with the inspections at first – students understood that these inspections were to make sure the rooms were clean and that we didn’t have illegal items lying around like beer bottles or shot glasses. Now, when we have room inspections, Residence Life is hunting for command strips…you know, those little strips that you stick a poster to, and then to remove, you pull the tab slowly and it’s supposed to leave no mark at all? During the last room inspections, residents have had to take those down, and many residents were surprised that command strips were not allowed.

Maybe if Residence Life had informed us at the beginning of the year that they were not to be used, so many of the residents would not have spent the money on them. The argument is that they pull the paint off the walls. If used correctly, they don’t.

There have been times when I have used sticky tack on the walls and the paint has come off the walls too. Does that mean we shouldn’t use sticky tack either? Rather than fining us because we have these things on the walls, why doesn’t residence life wait until we move out, see if there are any damages, and then fine us? These policies are leaving residents with little options to make our rooms not look like cells.

Furthermore, perhaps it was completely unnecessary that Residence Life brought maintenance and custodial staff around to our rooms as well. Do they have that little faith in us that we can’t keep our rooms clean and not overload our electrical sockets?

In addition to paying fines for doing something that we didn’t do, we have to pay if we want/need to come back to campus early. This is understandable, but it is not understandable for the administration to be inflexible about it when they start the new semester on a Thursday, like this coming semester. How insensitive is it to the students by starting school on a Thursday? Parents and students alike have to miss work and lose money to drive students to school. Parents and students spend enough money on this institution without having to lose more money in general by missing work. Or the student can arrive on the weekend, late, and get an argument from teachers when they miss class. They could also arrive on the weekend before, early, and pay a completely unaffordable fee for a college student to stay early.

Maybe this is not so difficult if the student lives close to SHU, but if the school wants to get out of state and out of country students, then maybe they should start being more giving with the start dates…or at least be more kind with the idea of having students come earlier in the week for cheaper prices. Personally, I wouldn’t mind starting school a week early or even staying later in the semester so I didn’t have to deal with the hassle of coming back in the middle of the week.

Let us not forget that the residents aren’t completely blameless for the conditions either. Everyone knows about the age old problem of food being stolen from the community refrigerators. Apparently, most students don’t know this golden rule. What is even more frustrating than people not being able to keep their hands off other people’s things is the residence life response. Their best weapon against theft-put up a sign. Or call a floor meeting and discuss it. They also have fined everyone to replace the stolen food.

What they are missing is that maybe it is not the people who live on the same floor who are stealing the food-maybe it is someone from a different floor stealing things from the fridge and vandalizing floor decorations. That also leaves another poor situation: what to do then? Fine the entire dormitory?

The feeling is that it seems like we residents are being punished and fined for the most ridiculous things. We’re college students; we should behave like the ages that we are. We shouldn’t need to be slapped on the wrist every time we put a toe out of line.