Damages

I was talking to Douglas from Yoga Records today at the store and we spoke briefly about our college experiences. He mentioned how when he was taking a summer class at an out-of-state college the institute of higher learning threatened to withhold the credits he’d earned on the grounds that he owed money from damage to his summer dorm room. According to him they were renovating the dorm where he was staying and it was the most invasive, annoying process imaginable. Although I don’t recall whether or not he had to pay them in the end (I’m pretty sure he didn’t), the saga reminded me of a similar experience I had while attending the University of Vermont.

Is it just me or does that look like a prison’s door?

I lived in dormitories exactly twice during my tenure as a college student. Once was my freshman year at UVM, and once was my junior year at Muhlenberg College. The experiences were vastly different from one another. One glaring difference was that in Vermont, I was charged an obscene amount of money for damages to the living quarters on the fourth floor of Wills Hall. Or “Ills” as it was commonly known after someone stole the “W” off the front of the dormatory. Granted, I didn’t pay one cent and just left there without tying up plenty of loose ends, but it’s the fact that they even charged me that was so heinous. Much like Douglas, the University threatened to withhold my credits (and consequently fuck me out of transferring to Muhlenberg) if I didn’t pay. I wrote a very strongly worded letter pretty much telling them they could go fuck themselves, and it worked.

When I lived in East at Muhlenberg there was no damage done that I was held responsible for. My “pod” was relatively well-behaved compared to the insanity that was Wills Hall at UVM during the 2001-2002 school year. Our floor was home to a number of drug dealers, alcoholics and sociopaths. At times it was a lot of fun, like when the kid across the hall from me dropped out of school and left me with a 30-serving Creatine-sized bottle of Vicodin. Other times, like when kids would take baseball bats to smoke detectors and exit signs, it was annoying. i swear to God, I can’t even remember how many exit signs were smashed in Willis hall that year. It was almost like a competition between floors. Every time the university sent out someone to install a new sign, kids would literally battle each other to see who could smash the new sign the fastest. Not only that, my fellow geniuses in Wills would also destroy trash bins (and then the trash bins of every other floor in the building, you know, to hide the evidence of their crimes), they would have March Madness-style tournaments with fighting fish and then leave the deceased in the hallways, they would group-vomit in the showers, intentionally clog toilets, and generally raise hell. Campus safety responded to two overdose calls during that school year. According to the final bill I stole from the RA’s doorway on my last day at UVM, we were only charged for one of those “Police Actions”.

Here’s a rundown of the damage bill from a few of the months I spent in Vermont:

09/11/01 – clean up trash – hallway – $14.00
09/12/01 – remove furniture from hallway – $14.00
10/22/01 – broken exit sign – north end – $35.04
11/18/01 – clean up vomit – bathroom – $14.00
12/02/01 – clean up trash – bathroom – $28.00
12/11/01 – repair exit sign – $69.68

First semester total damage $174.72

04/04/02 – broken exit sign – north end – $68.21
04/08/02 – broken exit sign – north end – $35.57
04/12/02 – broken exit sign – north end – $57.61
04/15/02 – broken exit sign – north end – $35.57
04/15/02 – recharge fire extinguisher – $17.81
04/15/02 – north end exit sign completely gone – $21.82
04/20/02 – police action across from 418 wills – $52.64
04/24/02 – toilet plugged – $21.82
04/29/02 – broken hallway window – south end – $31.18
04/29/02 – broken exit sign – north end – $35.57

Month of April total damage – $284.61

And if you think there was no damage done to the 4th floor of Ills Hall between January and April of 2002 you’re just being naive. Personally, I think someone just didn’t like that exit sign across the hall from my dorm room. It was very menacing. Always looming over the stairwell like that… shit, that exit sign was practically begging for it.

The Silver Seas – Catch Yer Own Train