“I will not vandalize the floor, and I will help prevent others from vandalizing.”
“I will not vandalize the floor, and I will help prevent others from vandalizing.”
“I will not vandalize the floor, and I will help prevent others from vandalizing.”
Imagine writing 27 more lines like this, and you’ll start to understand how 80 students on Vaughn’s honors floor felt Tuesday night after their resident assistants forced them to write the lines out of punishment.
“I felt degraded to the level of a 7-year-old,” said one punished student. “We pay $30,000 a year to be educated, not to be made a mockery.”
The punishment came after a group of prospective students and parents touring the honors floor last weekend came upon a note directed to the group.
It detailed “what they don’t tell you on the tour,” describing sex and drinking in the dorms. Bulletin board letters were also rearranged to say something offensive.
Although the RAs had no hard evidence of who committed the acts, all residents on the floor were told they had to write the 30 lines or their housing would be terminated, two residents said.
However, Alyssa Howard, the RA who came up with the idea, said she only told one man whose housing was under review that not writing the lines wouldn’t help his case.
Students also say that they were “disrespected” by the RAs and were told to “shut up.”
Howard said late Tuesday night that she felt bad for some of the students who complained their hands hurt.
Though she was angry, she said she was torn because she knew many of the students weren’t involved in the vandalism.
Howard said she took the bulletin board vandalism as a personal attack.
“A lot of people on other floors don’t take time on their bulletin boards,” Howard said. “It takes a long time to do the bulletin board and if you destroy something I did to make your community better, I feel like you’ve slapped me in the face.”
She said the RAs aren’t on a power trip and that they didn’t give out the punishment for the fun of it or to make the students feel stupid.
She said she’s always tried to make her residents feel comfortable, and she wishes that students realize how hard the RAs work.The purpose of the lines, she said, was to get the residents to take more responsibility for their floor.
She felt bad for those residents who had no involvement but also knew that some people just didn’t want to say anything, she said.
By having the residents write lines, she had hoped that some residents might speak up.
Another RA on the floor, Jamey Smith, had another reason for giving the residents lines to write.
“Basically if they are going to vandalize the floor and do middle school stuff, then we are going to treat them like they are in middle school.” Smith also added that he knew most of the people on the floor weren’t involved, and felt sorry for them.
Some residents said some men on the floor refused to write the lines, either walking away or simply sitting while others wrote.
In addition to writing lines, the RAs on the honors floor also had the residents make a banner about ideas to prevent vandalism, another way of having them take ownership, Howard said.
Howard said that Smith was planning to destroy the banner on his side of the residence hall, hoping the students would see how such vandalism felt.
Smith, however, denied that he was planning to do so. He pointed out the fact that the banner is still hanging, not destroyed, days after the incident, and thinks that what he said may have been misunderstood due to the noisy atmosphere.
Smith said that what he actually said was that he wanted students to do the banners in order for them to understand the kind of effort that goes into making a banner, but that he never planned on destroying it.
The Vaughn Center has very few cameras monitoring floors because their ideal layout would mean the cameras could see into individual rooms. As a result, the RAs had little proof of who did the vandalism, residents said.
The RAs admit it’s possible the vandals live on another floor, but not many students know that the tour group comes through Vaughn’s seventh floor or that the floor has a model room.
Several students on the floor said they first learned of the vandalism after seeing signs along their hall informing them of an emergency meeting that night.
“When I heard, ’emergency meeting’ I though something awful happened,” one student said. “It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve had to do since elementary school.”
Post your thoughts or vote below. Also, see The Minaret’s staff editorial: Editorial: Residence Life Culture of Silence Breeds Injustice
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