I Hate University Housing

When entering a place like this university, everything is best explained with about a 40 percent bullshit margin. Sixty percent is true: the rest is the purest form of male bovine excrement. I know this, and my brain is adjusted for the inevitable. Given this, I was still not ready for the stunning 90 percent of bullshit that was piled high and deep surrounding the University of Oregon’s residence halls. Looking back at the brochure they gave me at the beginning of the year, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. This why we have booze. What follows are actual samples from UO Housing’s pamphlet for its residence halls, followed by the swift kick of reality:

Resident Assistants (RAs): As student staff members, RAs are graduate or upper-class students with knowledge of campus resources and student issues. Living in every hall of each housing complex, RAs are available to answer questions, connect residents to UO services or activities, and follow up on student concerns.

Each residence hall comes complete with a walking prick known as an RA (that’s Resident Asshole). These are the people put in residence halls so parents of freshmen will believe there is actually someone in charge. There are basically two types of RA’s: the invisible RA and the power trip RA. The invisible RA is the best kind because, frankly, as long as the ceiling isn’t caving in around them, they couldn’t possibly care less about the drunken antics going on upstairs. The power trip RA is not really that bad, just horribly inept. These people patrol the halls at 10pm and ask me to turn my stereo down because some people might be trying to sleep. This is 10pm on a Friday night. Yet these endlessly helpful individuals somehow disappear on Wednesday night when someone decides to play full-contact street hockey in the hallway at 4am. These people are so horribly ignorant that it is possible to carry a passed-out, 260-pound drunk down four flights of stairs without anyone noticing. Despite their utter incompetence, they still walk around like the loser high school hall monitors that they once were, in their never-ending quest to make sure that music is at an acceptable level for the first hour of the supposed quiet hours.

The terms residence hall and dorm are often used interchangeably, yet the University of Oregon recognizes a significant difference between the two. An important objective of residence halls at the UO is to provide not just a place to sleep, but also opportunities for personal and educational growth.

Actually, a simpler explanation would be: “People sleep in a dorm. A residence hall is a place for people to engage in a game of tackle football outside my door at ungodly hours.” A residence hall is where every intoxicated female can gather and sing “Hang on Sloopy” at a volume that makes the fourth-floor windows rattle. I can only imagine the racket on the third floor during one of these spontaneous moshing parties. The residence hall is a place where we can try out the fire alarm system, thus forcing an entire hall to be woken up and driven half-naked outside in the middle of the night. Frankly, sleep is one of the last things going on in the residence halls. I’m led to believe that the residence hall is actually designed to keep any noise from being inadvertently muffled. The walls must be so thin that a thumbtack could completely puncture it; acoustically, the halls are designed perfectly, with the hollow, wooden furniture acting as a woofer to amplify the sound. Let’s face it, the only personal growth in the residence hall is the vein on my forehead getting larger as people next door play grab-ass. And educational growth? That would be on the list of vulgar slang I have developed while trying to sleep. I think it’s time to make one thing perfectly clear to whatever semi-human entity oversees the residence halls. The only real purposes of a dorm are to sleep and a stockpile area for all the useless crap trucked in from home. The rest is just material for me to poke fun at.

Residence Life staff create cultural, social, and educational events and activities in each hall throughout the academic year. Beach and ski trips, movie nights, special lecture series, and pizza feeds are a few examples of the activities you may participate in while living at the University of Oregon.

These are the residence hall activities. From the beginning I knew these had the potential to be truly sad. Opening with a moderately interesting idea at best, they crescendo with an endless stream of hype in the form of flyers and posters, only to end in a spectacular anticlimax that would make Tom Green yawn. The problem is that they are trying to promote what they would call wholesome entertainment. Yet we are at college, so they are going to try to impress people by being outrageous and daring, but not so much that anyone would be offended. Basically, take the worst organized high school event, throw in an attempt to be risquÈ without offending anyone and top it off with a budget of about $20. The end result is something that is only slightly less pathetic than the people who attend these gatherings on a regular basis. So far, the most horrific example of this was the “2001 Sexpo!” To wit: a bunch of losers who will be lucky to get laid before they start wearing adult diapers can gather in the basement to be surrounded by pictures of scantily clad men and women while throwing darts at inflated condoms. If puncturing contraceptives isn’t your thing, there is the Kissing Kama Sutra, where you can receive sexual advice from someone who has seen less action than a convent. Then you can end your evening by throwing rings at a rubber penis with none other than the Oregon Daily Emerald’s Captain Sensible.

Keeping in mind the repressed sexual drive of some members of the residence hall, I guess it’s no surprise that on Valentine’s Day, a few of them got a little rebellious. I don’t need to describe how pathetic this was: the announcements spoke for themselves. Not getting any nookie? Then come to the basement and have a cookie and watch horror movies! Wow, horror movies and a cookie! That’s so much better than drinking and passing out while sitting on the john. Unless those cookies were laced with a heavy depressant, the mood in that room was about as depressing as a sober OC staffer. I still think it would have been funny if someone went and brought a date, just to mock the dateless wonders.

The terror does not end with sexual activities. Every other event has the same feel. The dances are straight out of a really bad basement-nightclub movie, minus the possibility of a maniac with thirteen automatic weapons suddenly opening fire while half of the dancers turn into vampires. In fact, the only good thing about these activities is the free food. That’s the only reason I bothered showing up in the first place. I got my free snacks and retreated back to the boozed portion of the dorm.

The residence hall trips are only slightly less puke-inducing. About mid-January, Robbins Hall decided to take a trip to Mt. Bachelor for the weekend. The cost was $40, which seemed rather inexpensive for a ski weekend at Bachelor. After 22 people complete with ski equipment and luggage were stuffed into two vans, I got the chance to ride in a van for three hours, enjoying all the comforts of a veal-fattening pen. With relatively few near-death experiences on the icy road, we arrived at our house for the weekend. I found out that 22 people were being put into a house that only had enough beds for twelve. On a related note, making a bed out of couch cushions and a ski coat is only slightly more comfortable than passing out on the bathroom floor. After a day’s worth of skiing, there’s nothing quite like having your spinal column twisted into the shape of an ampersand.

Residence hall activities are primarily for the most pathetic losers that use it in order to have some semblance of a social life. The rest of the dorm-dwellers are too drunk or too busy trying to get passing grades to care about activities that would make a 5-year-old scream “Grow up, you poor, pathetic, chronic masturbaters!”

Because most people coming to campus know very few people, most new students will be assigned a roommate. In the experience of our professional staff, these roommate matches are often more successful than those between friends who knew each other before college. We also into account the personal hours, friends, social life, approach to cleanliness, music preferences, and age.

Okay, now we’re talking pure, prime-cut, USDA choice bullshit. I don’t know the name of the incompetent, stupid, waste of precious natural resources that put a walking alpha-male in the same room as a bitter, cynical renegade from 1942, but they are obviously not qualified to clean the bathrooms with their face. It’s not that my roommate and I don’t get along, but after filling out a form including everything from music preference to underwear size, I thought I would be matched with someone with whom I share at least one interest. Yet somehow, I was paired with a person who is so perfectly my opposite, it had to be either an act of supreme stupidity or simply a cruel joke. I know that some people have ended up rooming with someone who became a good friend. That’s great, but even a member of OSPIRG has intelligent thoughts once or twice a year. The fact is, despite the professional staff, it seems the most common complaint when talking to another dorm-dweller is that the person they are forced to live with has the personality of a garden hose. The reason many people leave the dorms after the first term is simply because they are afraid that if they have to live with that person any longer, a mortal crime may take place.

Study lounges, big screen TV lounges, game areas and laundry facilities are common features in all residence halls.

This is where we talk about the cultural hub of the Hamilton complex, known as the basement. With all the well-maintained equipment, it’s a wonder that few take advantage of the wonderful recreational facilities. It could be because the game area consists of a single pool table balancing on an unstable stack of newspapers. There is a small weight room consisting of about eight machines, of which four actually function. Practically screaming the phrase “horrendous afterthought,” the basement, like the activities that take place there, is an ignored and hopeless half-assed attempt at greatness, used only by the few people who find it comforting to study in an environment where they are not only completely deprived of sunlight, but also slowly overcome by carbon monoxide, radon gas and the horrible stench coming from the trash rooms.

And, by way of a conclusion, here is a list of ten random things they never bother to mention in the brochures:

1. Drunks will break everything that can possibly be broken without the aid of heavy machinery, and you will have to pay for it. Hint: If a member of your dorm is completely drunk the entire first week at school, find a way to lock him in his room with enough booze to keep him entertained for the rest of the year. Remember to let him out before you leave in June.

2. One of the most popular residence hall activities is when the hall comes together for the monthly “which bastard took the lounge furniture again?” interrogation.

3. All showers have two, and only two, settings: arctic glacier water and 30 degrees above boiling.

4. If all urinals are broken or in use, the water fountain can be an effective substitute. But by that time you will be so drunk you won’t know exactly what you’re pissing on.

5. He with the loudest stereo pretty much decides the sleeping schedule for the rest of the hall.

6. A residence hall is not a place to study. The ability to study in a dorm room is not a naturally occurring phenomenon.

7. Everyone in a residence hall is fully equipped with video and photography equipment to capture everyone else’s drunken exploits. Rest assured the minute you strip naked and hang off the rafters while screaming, “I am Tico Taco, king of the striped monkey men!” some deviant will be there with a video camera.

8. Losing consciousness is one of the great traditions of the residence hall. Although alcohol is the most popular method, don’t be took quick to dismiss the many other means. Some include being hit square in the face by various pieces of sports equipment flying through the air, being overcome by fumes in the trash room or trying to read the assigned pages in your economics textbook.

9. The caste system is as follows: Those with access to a motor vehicle are ultimately the most important. Unless a person wants to waste their weekends in the dorms, these people must be honored. Those that provide booze to the rest of the hall are only less important that he with a vehicle, because a dorm runs on two substances: beer and coffee. Third comes the person who consumes the most alcohol for he provides much of the entertainment. Other dorm dwellers must worship these people in order to receive the important services they provide.

10. Finally, the residence halls have been crafted in such a way that any other pit you may call home will still be immensely more comfortable and less irritating than the dorms. After living at home for 18 years, the residence halls will ultimately prove that any place with a roof is habitable. The residence halls will get a college student used to the things that seem strange in other places. Later, when the dorm dweller sees a half-naked stranger hurling in their toilet, they will walk by, reminding them to flush when they are finished.