When I saw this email, I almost had a heart attack.

Bwogger Isabel Sepúlveda’s suite is having some TV-related issues. Namely, someone keeps breaking them and she’s tired of it. 

I thought we were done with this shit. I stopped complaining about how unfair it was to every person who talked to me for more than 5 minutes. I paid the $60 Columbia charged me replace a TV in my lounge that I never used (okay, it was just charged to my account, but in my defense, I have like $20 in my bank account right now). We let it, and the lounge in general, collect dust as we all continued politely pretending the other people who lived in this suite don’t exist.

It was a system that worked for everyone, but I can’t keep pretending anymore. Suitemates, it’s time we had a talk, and since I couldn’t pick half of you out of a crowd, this is the best way to do it. And why do we need to talk, you may ask? Well, you see, hypothetical suitemate, I recently discovered someone smashed the screen of the television in our suite. It’s the second time this semester that’s happened and frankly, that’s a little ridiculous.

It’s not even that I’m upset because I use it all the time. Like any self-respecting college student, if I want to watch a show, it means my bed, my laptop and I will be spending the next 12 hours engaging in the only threesome I’ll ever participate in. It’s the principle of the thing really. This is communal property, like the kitchen or bathroom, and you should treat it as such. Actually, maybe that’s not the best example, because I’ve been in our kitchen and it’s slowly turning into a bio-hazard zone. Let’s instead say that you should treat it the way you do everyone else who lives here: ignoring it until you need to borrow a spoon or making awkward small talk when you both need to use the microwave at the same time.

If it had only happened once, I could have ignored it. Accidents happen, and sometimes those accidents break a piece of equipment Columbia claims costs $800. But twice demonstrates a pattern of a clear lack of respect to the people and things living around you. I don’t know if it was the same perpetrator or a copycat and I don’t know which is worse. Having one person with a callous disregard for the wallets of their peers or two people with so little care and awareness for their surroundings that they make the same mistake they knew someone else had made.

Luckily, this time someone had the human decency to come forward and admit to this wrongdoing, which is incredibly surprising given the fact that, due to Columbia’s system, it makes far more sense to stay quiet and let everyone else shoulder the burden. So we’ve been saved another $60 and since Housing isn’t replacing it this time, we’re saved from wondering if this would happen again. Let this instead be a reminder to both the people who live in my suite, as well as everyone on this campus. Respect this space and the people in it, because at the end of the day, Columbia doesn’t want there to be any sign you ever lived there and you’ll have to pay a ridiculously inflated price to erase any and every piece of evidence that you lived on this campus.

not again via Bwog Staff