Campus destruction runs rampant
By: Margaret Cohn
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There are a few things I've come to expect from Sundays at LFC. I expect to wake up wanting nothing more than to go to brunch. I expect to stay in bed all day and watch movies with my roommates. I expect to see stone trash can holders overturned and I expect the necessity of avoiding beer bottles that are shattered all over the ground. Maybe it's my freshman naiveté, but I thought punching through glass doors, throwing chairs off balconies, and graffiti-ing public spaces were acts of high school or even junior high school students.
I wish I were making up some of the acts I've just listed, but I promise I'm not that creative. Anyone who wishes to is able to access the daily crime logs reported by the Public Safety department. They are available on the Public Safety website and we often publish some of the highlights in The Stentor. I choose which ones to publish based on which I think the student body would find most amusing. Perhaps this only emphasizes or encourages the acts, but in my head, I publish them to show the student body how juvenile some actions can be.
I'm sure as a reader you're thinking that many of these actions or pranks are done while the student is drunk or angry, but really, are those excuses? Since when did "being drunk" turn into "being drunk and damaging property"? If students are not able to control their drunken actions then they probably should not be drinking.
All actions have repercussions; even something as simple as overturning a stone trash can holder. The trash spills out onto the ground and someone has to spend their time and energy turning the holder right-side up and they then must collect the trash and dispose of it again. I say again because the trash had already been disposed of properly when someone put the trash in the trashcan. A custodian or maintenance worker throwing the trash away again seems a bit repetitive.
Beyond the unnecessary time spent correcting the mistakes of students is the money spent. Recently, a water fountain was ripped from a Harlan Hall wall. Water fountains can cost up to $900.00. Do any students want to volunteer to pay for the new water fountain and labor needed to install it? Even something like breaking the glass that cages in a fire extinguisher can be a costly fix. I, myself, would rather see that time and money being spent somewhere more productive.
What about our community? How does our college look to the town of Lake Forest or visitors? How does our college look to ourselves? I don't mean to be cliché here, but do the students who vandalize our campus go home and vandalize their parents' house? Probably not. This kind of vandalism happens at colleges and universities all over the country, but if those colleges were to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, should we? Let's build and strengthen the LFC sense of community by making our campus somewhere that is destruction free.
On Tuesday, December 1, Associate Dean of Students Todd Harris sent out an email speaking out on the recent acts of vandalism. He asks that if you have any information on these acts, to call the Office of Residential Life or Public Safety to make an anonymous report.
Personally, I don't want to attend a college that reminds me of my junior high school because of all the graffiti and overturned trashcans, and I don't expect that many disagree with my feelings. Fellow Foresters, next time you feel like punching through a glass window, I hope you don't.
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Chicago Movers
posted 12/14/09 @ 2:35 PM CST
You're absolutely right - these actions are inexcusable and juvenile. You shouldn't have to come to expect this sort of behavior at school or anywhere else in adult society. (Continued…)
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