One of the most difficult issues to cope with as a Floor Governor is the increasing number of vandalism incidents our campus has seen over the course of not only this semester but also over the course of the past two years.
Merriam-Webster defines vandalism as follows: “Willful or malicious destruction or defacement of public or private property.” Sociologist Stanley Cohen goes further by breaking vandalism down into six different categories:
1. Acquisitive vandalism (looting and petty theft).
2. Tactical vandalism (to advance some end other than acquiring money or property – such as breaking a window to be arrested and get a bed for the night in a police cell).
3. Ideological vandalism (carried out to further an explicit ideological cause or deliver a message).
4. Vindictive vandalism (for revenge).
5. Play vandalism (damage resulting from children’s games).
6. Malicious vandalism (damage caused by a violent outpouring of diffuse frustration and rage that often occurs in public settings).
Connecticut College has been affected by the first, fourth, fifth and sixth categories, as far as we are concerned. We can further break these four categories down into subtypes—intentional vandalism and non-intentional vandalism. Non-intentional vandalism is when you decide to swing on an exit sign and, not properly estimating its durability, break it; or when you accidentally spill a drink and forget to clean it up. Intentional vandalism is when you are in an overly energetic state of mind, decide that it would be hilarious to break an exit sign and do so, or when you pour out a drink in the middle of the hallway because you do not live there and don’t care about whether or not the hallway is clean. Both of these types of incidents and all of their variations have had a profound effect on Connecticut College not just in a financial sense, but also by affecting the well-being of the residential community. We would like to first address the financial effects and share some statistics.
At the end of the 2010-2011 school year, incidents of vandalism cost the student body around $50,000. The following year, this number had increased to around $75,000. As of November 15, 2012, the number of vandalism incidents over the whole semester is 223, whereas exactly one year ago, the number was only 116. If this number continues to increase at this rate, the student body will pay roughly $150,000 in vandalism expenses at the end of the academic year. Depending on where you live on campus, you may have to pay hundreds of dollars in vandalism fees. While some students come from a wealthy enough background to pay for these fees without a problem, many of us cannot afford these extra expenses. Each of us has had residents come up to us and express how difficult it will be for them and their families to pay this extra charge on top of the charges for tuition, textbooks, transportation and living expenses.
While we cannot deny the seriousness of vandalism’s consequences, there are much deeper issues concerning what these incidents say about student character at Connecticut College. We are fortunate enough to go to a school with an honor code, a school where the administration gives us certain liberties that students at other schools couldn’t even fathom. Yet every day we see little things that represent the general demise of respect for this honor code and for this institution of learning. There is a campus-wide sense of entitlement that since many of us pay so much money to go here we have the right to treat the campus as we wish without regard for all of the opportunities it has given us. We often choose, in varying degrees of severity, to abuse the freedoms we have. We manipulate the way the honor code works instead of rightfully treating it as our one common creed.
Vandalizing a wall, a hallway, a door, a window or any other property of the college is as much of an honor code violation as cheating on an exam. It shows an utter lack of respect for our school and our peers. It undermines the fact that the honor code is a privilege and not a right; just as going to Conn is a privilege and not a right.
Some specific acts are particularly infuriating. The second floor of Freeman has had toilet seats broken off and tossed on the floor at least five times this semester. In Johnson, people have been constantly breaking exit signs, which cost $185 to replace. All over campus there is broken glass, ripped down posters, unwarranted fire drills, vomit in the sink, on the floor, in the shower, on the sidewalk and dried alcohol festering outside of our doors, with rarely any student doing anything to clean any of it up. People have urinated in the hallway, broken lights and done idiotic things with fire extinguishers. When these things happen, the dorm becomes unsafe and unsanitary. It smells horrendous, it looks shameful and no one wants to be a part of such a putrid living environment.
One more aspect of this issue that we would like to address is that the custodians clean up this mess if the people responsible do not. One might think that a custodian’s job is all-encompassing, and that a routine mopping of the floor is as tolerable to them as is picking half-full beer cans out of a toilet filled with vomit, or any other of the aforementioned scenarios. Fuck that. The custodians help us keep the dorm clean, but it is not their job to tend to incidents of the most despicable nature. It is our job as matriculated students to prevent these incidents from happening in the first place. Not only will taking preventative measures against vandalism help the school start to come out of the anarchic rut it is currently in, but it is also a lovely way to thank our custodians for taking out our trash, making the bathrooms smell nice, and everything else that they do that makes our lives easier.
As members of the Residential Education and Living staff, we put forth a vast amount of effort to promote a healthy and positive environment for our houses. We also invest time and the school’s money into our houses so that our residents share a great experience and learn to appreciate the opportunities that Connecticut College offers to its students. It feels degrading when students pull these acts of vandalism in our dorms. You disrespect the effort, dedication and time we have spent trying to provide a pristine living environment.
We ask all of you to take these thoughts into consideration. Speak and act out against these atrocities. Tell someone if you saw something wrong, or encourage the responsible party to come forth and own up to his or her wrongdoing. It is only through such self-governance that this college will once again take flight and restore its full dignity. It is only through individual action and protest against the bad that this college can truly be defined by honor. •
Maybe if there was more accountability for the offenders actions. Such as heavier sanctions (and stick with them), possible prosecution for these acts. If you do that a couple of times, the word gets around. It will be a deterrent to know that something will happen to the violators if this is done, not just restitution. Unless the administration takes this seriously and treats vandalism as symptom of the bigger problem (Alcohol Culture) , no solution will be truly effective. And I am not sure that the administration will do anything. If you look around campus and see the repairs to the damage. A lot of repairs are just “band-aids” and or no even repaired at all. But students are still seeing the bill for damages, and labor. It sounds like the college is making money on it….
To call what is going on “atrocities” is wildly hyperbolic and undermines the aim of your article. Throwing up in a toilet or drunkenly peeing in a hallway is anything but an atrocity. This is college, things get broken and people drink too much sometimes and throw up.
I think the larger issue here is lack of community, whilst drinking/drunk. Students feel (and while reality may not match this feeling, that doesn’t matter) that campus safety will break up any floor party, or large gathering of students in rooms. As a result the last two years have been dominated by the bank street bars and a surge in off-campus, non-Conn affiliated housing. Students now spend much less time drunk in the dorms, while intuitively this might sound like a good thing, it is not. As someone who goes out almost every weekend, I feel little to no connection to this place while I’m drunk; while I personally haven’t broken anything, I know people who have and they share my same lack of connectedness to this place while drunk. When kids stumble back drunk into a place they don’t spend anytime whilst drunk, they are much less likely to treat it as a home; instead they choose to treat it as simply a place to crash–cue vandalism.
When students bring a point like this, or something similar, or even just a plea to let us have more fun on campus on the weekend, the administration always says: “no, we can’t have too many people in the hallway, underage drinking, etc.” However, they are more than willing to turn a blind on Floralia so long as you’re not flaunting your underage drinking. You can even drink in the common room at breakfast! My question: why can’t it always be like Floralia (not the tents and music) but the drinking leniency? Instead of infantalizing us and forcing kids off campus, which leads to incidents of arrests on bank street, why not show us the trust that’s so heavily a implicit in the honor code? If you can trust us not to cheat on finals, why can’t you trust us with alcohol?
As far as I am concerned, “ASlightlyLessConcernedStudent” makes a terrible argument. Regardless of where you choose to be whilst intoxicated, destructive, expensive, or unsafe acts of vandalism show a lack of respect for your fellow students, the honor code, and the Connecticut College community. I don’t care where you drink – You are a student at Connecticut College; this is your home and it deserves to be treated with respect. Although you may not feel that way, the majority of students on this campus do. When a few students vandalize in such a way as to disrespect the community it effects everyone and not just in a monetary sense. Vandalizing the community destroys the sense of community that you claim to want.
Yes, this is college and people will drink too much. It is a given that people with throw up in toilets, but it is when people throw up on the floor/hall and do nothing about it that is a problem. Despite the sense of entitlement that that you display, you are not entitled to damage your community and living environment. You mention peeing in a hallway as if it is some casual occurrence – it isn’t. I have no idea where you got the idea that peeing in a hallway is okay, but seriously that is just wrong. No custodian should have to clean up for anybodies reckless behavior.
Your final point regarding campus safety/administration treating every day like Floralia is another highly flawed idea. Floralia is always the most destructive and debaucherous day of the year. However fun it may be, when students are left to drink in an uncontrolled way it is fully taken advantage of. Yes, campus safety should back off on breaking up floor parties, but turning a blind eye is a terrible idea.
If we as a student body showed that we could be trusted, we would be. There is no need for the senseless acts of vandalism that have plagued our campus this year. Andy and JJ, Thank you for bring attention to this.
You haven’t addressed my argument at all, you’ve just stated that other students and I shouldn’t feel the way we do. I’m trying to offer an account of why it’s happening, and from that how we can fix it. I’m claiming that the issue is we can’t have fun on campus, that causes people to go off campus, thus they come back drunk and fuck shit up because of a lack of connectedness to campus whilst drunk. If you have a better reason as to why this is happening, by all means, tell us. But in your response, all you’ve said is this shouldn’t happen, well no shit it shouldn’t happen.
Quarreling over peeing in the hallway is bit childish, I simply meant that peeing in the hallway is not an atrocity. Sure it’s gross, but there are much worse things that happen on this campus. I happen to know the incident Andy is mentioning here and it was a one time occurrence. While, yes, it’s gross, peeing in the hallway is not an epidemic we should be worried about.
However, you’re right that turning a blind eye is too strong, I should have said they should be more lenient. Back when kegs were allowed in common rooms campus police would be in the dorms making sure students were okay, instead of badgering them about pouring out drinks. By all accounts, this engendered good will between campus safety and the students, as the students felt like they were being treated as adults and the campus police were getting the respect they deserve(d). Instead Something along those lines would be a much better situation.
Fellow Student!
I understand your frustration, and while I disagree with a lot of your points, I think that we have a common goal: Improving Conn’s social life. That probably didn’t come across as something that I care about in the article, but it most definitely is.
I’d really like to talk to you in person, to both further hear your argument, and stress some of my points in response to some of yours. Please email me if you’d like to do this! asteinze@conncoll.edu
Thanks for reading the article, and for caring, because I feel like an even larger problem at this school than vandalism is student apathy, and I’d rather have someone argue the points you were making than not caring and not reading/posting at all.
Respectfully,
Andy
It is apparent that we need to provide students with social venues where they do not feel so much anger against the property of the college. Students are very bored with the social scene here and on a large scale they hate cro dances. In addition, parties that are not broken up by campus safety or New London police are few and far between. At the core of this issue is bringing back viable social options (kegs in common rooms) where students via the honor code are encouraged to responsibly drink. This social scene unfortunately even in my three year here as become a sad excuse for college. Those who love conn have started to grow contemptuous towards the administration taking such severe measures to ensure that students are limited in their social events absent of campus safety’s presence. As a student here it is upsetting and sad, especially due to the recent news of fishbowl being canceled. The administration must realize that their harsh agenda does not reflect positively on the college as I would now never recommend anybody to apply to this school, which is different to how I felt freshman year. I would like college to be a great social experience which does not include Thursdays at creepy “stash’s” and Saturdays at a cro dance. Conn’s your dorm damages were lower when they allowed kegs in common rooms isn’t that ironic. Hope things get better for the future where students get to enjoy the small events such as tent dance and fishbowl, oh how sad it is…
It is apparent that we need to provide students with social venues where they do not feel so much anger against the property of the college. Students are very bored with the social scene here and on a large scale they hate cro dances. In addition, parties that are not broken up by campus safety or New London police are few and far between. At the core of this issue is bringing back viable social options (kegs in common rooms) where students via the honor code are encouraged to responsibly drink. This social scene unfortunately even in my three years here has become a sad excuse for college. Those who love Conn have started to grow contemptuous towards the administration taking such severe measures to ensure that students are limited in their social events absent of campus safety’s presence. As a student here it is upsetting and sad, especially due to the recent news of fishbowl being canceled. The administration must realize that their harsh agenda does not reflect positively on the college as I would now never recommend anybody to apply to this school, which is different to how I felt freshman year. I would like college to be a great social experience which does not include Thursdays at creepy “stash’s” and Saturdays at a cro dance. Conn’s dorm damages were lower when they allowed kegs in common rooms isn’t that ironic. Hope things get better for the future where students get to enjoy the small events such as tent dance and fishbowl, oh how sad it is…