We’ve all had to pay residence hall damage charges at some point during our college careers. Not just for stained rugs or marks on the wall in our own rooms, but also for the hallways and common areas on our floors. Rowdy students are part of college life. As such, the occasional busted ceiling tile or puke-covered elevator is expected.
Students should rightly be expected to cover the costs for their excesses, otherwise the scourge of low-grade vandalism will only grow. And while vandals might come from different floors and buildings, students must be willing to take responsibility for their living spaces.
However, there are several rooms and lounges sprinkled throughout the dorms that specifically host events for outside groups.
Spaces like the McDowell and Hughes Formal Lounges can be reserved for events. Usually, when these spaces are damaged and no one is found responsible, the AU student body picks up the tab — not individual floors.
Unfortunately, residents of Letts 6 are on the hook for about $4,860 in damages after some miscreants roughed up one of these common areas, the Letts Sky Lounge.
The Sky Lounge is designated as a “small meeting space” on the University Center’s website and can be reserved for use by students not living on Letts 6.
Organizations often use the space for events and sometimes things go wrong. But currently, if anyone vandalizes or accidentally breaks something in the Sky Lounge and no one is found responsible, residents of Letts 6 pay.
That just doesn’t make much sense.
There are meeting spaces inside the dorms that are considered “divorced spaces,” meaning charges from damages are the responsibility of all students, not just the residents of that dorm.
If the Letts Sky Lounge can be reserved by outside groups like many of these divorced spaces, then why is it not treated in the same fashion?
Outside of installing security cameras in hallways to catch vandals in the act (which isn’t going to happen, as it might be seen as an invasion of privacy), there’s not much that can be done to obtain the identity of these villains.
Therefore it is only fair for the University to more evenly spread charges when damage is done to common areas like the Letts Sky Lounge.
We hope the University will make these changes before this year’s Letts 6 residents find themselves down a collective $4,860.
