Everyone who has ever lived in a Loyola residence hall has a horror story. That bathroom stall that was broken by some freshman in a drunken rage, and stayed that way for weeks. The makeshift slip ‘n’ slide in Biever Hall. The chicken in that vacant Resident Assistant dorm. The crazy clowns that terrorized the halls. Straight-up shit in the shower. These stories are usually disgusting, sometimes traumatizing, but always funny … at least with some time and distance to process. But beyond the goofy tales that become legend, there are also those not-so-funny horror stories. The ones that a million emails and phone calls could not rectify. The horror stories that at best, ended in tears, but at worst, left students homeless.

This semester, residents of Biever Hall were each fined $10 due to the graffiti “Fuck ResLife” that was written in permanent marker in the stairwell. Rather than taking punitive action across over 300 students, perhaps Residential Life should have first asked ‘why, oh why, would somebody think to write in permanent marker such a message in the stairwell? And why is it so terribly hard to pinpoint only a single person who would think of such a sentiment?’

There is a massive amount of graffiti covering the halls and bathrooms of Biever Hall, yet Residential Life only takes action when a minimal amount of graffiti, only two words written in permanent marker, is directed toward them. This implies that vandalism is acceptable unless it is commentary against Residential Life.

This fine also highlights the impotence of Residential Life toward actual problems, and reinforces the idea that it only cares about retaining its image. Residential Life does not exist to perform unjust collective punishment, like taking money from on-campus residents at will, while ignoring its own ineptitude.

And where exactly is all the money they collected? How is it being used?

Now, we say all this fully understanding how horribly feral many young college students are. We are sure managing university housing isn’t much dissimilar to overseeing a wolf preserve.

All that being said, the actions of a few crazy college students shouldn’t be cause to penalize all. Amongst those students, there are some who have been victim to the wrong kinds of Residential Life horror stories, and don’t need another dang fine they did nothing to deserve and will have no idea where their money is going.