Essay 3

Stephanie Riccio

Eng 112

Essay 3

                  Southern Connecticut State University is misconstrued as a clean and positive environment for students. After living here in Hickerson Hall for the past eight months, I have noticed all the underlying problems that exist in the dorm halls. A statement made by current student Karoli Rodriguez was,” I have never been more disgusted by the living conditions I am in, in my entire life.” This was said as she sprayed the hallway with Lysol to cover up the smell of fish and throw up. The dorm life here at SCSU needs to be positively renovated to give the students a better experience of on campus housing.

                  While living in an SCSU dorm, you are required to have two RA’s (resident advisor) to watch over the halls and make sure if there are any problems or concerns you have someone to talk to. Over my time here I have realized that the RA’s like to take their form of “power” and run with it.   Personally, I have been harassed by multiple different RA’s; making comments towards me about the people I bring into the building, the times I go in and out of the building, or just to me in general. For example, my roommate and I recently had three of our male friends here at SCSU to visit. Meanwhile one of our best friends had just tragically passed away; we wanted to get our mind off things and cheer up for a little, not knowing us having our friends there would cause the RA’s to act in such a way. As we were signing the three boys in, on the of male RA’s said out loud in front of the whole lobby,” so which one are you guys fucking tonight?” You can imagine the shock we were all in as the rest of the RA’s who were at the desk laughed it off as if it were a joke.        

 Another problem with authority is that they think they are able to talk to the residents any way they want. I’ve heard an RA call a resident a bitch, annoying, and even ratchet. Not knowing what to do the student simply walks away because an RA is supposed to be a positive authority figure that you should respect. There has been many times where students forget their hoot loot. Living here at Southern you know that you need your hoot loot to unlock the door to get into your building. I have seen multiple times and even experienced myself when the RA’s who are on desk duty will not unlock the door for you and leave you outside until someone who is walking out of the building opens the door for you.

Every other week we have something called room checks where the RA’s on your floor go from room to room and look for anything illegal or that is prohibited by the fire marshals. They will also ask you questions trying to get to know you such as what’s your favorite color or food. My roommate and I have gotten compliments from the resident advisors about the décor in our room, never once have we been told to take anything down or put anything away. While we were on break, there was a candle taken from our room, but it wasn’t just any candle. This candle was the one that we lit at our friends candle lit vigil after he was murdered. The candle has not been used nor was it lit when it was taken away. Now we will never get that back and our RA’s were fully aware of the circumstance and what the candle was for.

In each of the residence halls there are janitors that “clean” their assigned floors every morning. Janitors are supposed to be there to fix any maintenance problems, leaking, or flooding. How are they doing their jobs when on my floors bath room there are only three shower heads on the showers. In total there are nine different stalls in which you are allowed to shower, three of them have the correct shower head on them and the rest spray a powerful beam of water directly onto your body. Never mind the fact that you are in a three foot by three foot box and have nowhere to move out of the way from this stream of water because there are clumps of girls hair, dirty tampons, and gum stuck all over the walls.

The worst part about being stuck in a building with a bunch of dirty girls and no one to help the situation; is that we all get billed for it. For example, a female on our floor decided to flush her pad. Not thinking it would over flow the toilet, our bathroom was swamped with bloody water. No one would confess to this gruesome act so every resident on our floor got charged $35.00 to help fix the problem. How is that fair to the other 39 residents who clearly did not do it? As you leave for vacations such as spring break and Christmas, you have to clean things out such as your fridge and cabinets of food that may go bad. That is a common act that happens at every college, yet here at SCSU there’s more to it than just that. We receive a list of tasks we must complete or yet again we will get billed. For example we have to tip our fridge over and let the ice melt onto our floor from the freezer, then wait for it all to be out and mop up the puddle that is left on the ground of our dorm room. My roommate and I had no ice to dissolve so we cleaned out the freezer and left our fridge off. When we got back we were billed $13.90 because our fridge was not tipped over for the RA’s to see.

I believe that a solution for this problem with the RA’s having too much power is for them to go through a different training. Clearly if they think they can treat us like were under them and disrespect us, something was not done right when they were trained for this position. After doing some research I found a website, www.reslife.org that offered many tips to new RA’s. They offer activities that you can endure with your new residents to help everyone get to know each other and start off building a healthy relationship between one another. The website stated, “This training is designed to help RA’s prepare for any difficulty that they come in contact with”, and I think that is a positive way to help with any problems that may occur.

A solution for the dirty halls and bathrooms would come along with stronger guidelines that are set by the hall director. As a whole building it should be very clear of what you are and aren’t supposed to do in these dorm halls. As the rules are now; they state that if they have to call a janitor after the hours that they have already been there then every resident on the floor gets billed. I think this is completely wrong because that gives girls who don’t care about cleanliness a free pass to do whatever they want. How would they get caught if every one will be getting billed? We all go down as a group even the residents who spend barely any time here; and that is truly unfair to the other residents. An idea to help prevent further problems is outside of the bathroom could be a sign in sheet for who enters and exits the bathroom to keep track of who is truly making the mess. Yes some may say this is drastic; but what about the innocent ones who constantly are having to pay for the messes that other females make?

A question to ask many, how would you feel if the place you referred to as “home” for nine months was a placed you hated?  Living somewhere in which you feel uncomfortable and personally attacked by the authority figures who are in that building is an awful feeling.  It also comes along with added stress; as if what first year college students are dealing with is not enough? To have a healthy and successful freshman year of college, you need to have all of the proper aspects of your living situation to be able to function. Something needs to be done to set a better path for the incoming freshman.