Tuesday’s article regarding the Phoenix definitely caught my attention. I related to the article not because I am looking to rent apartments but because I endured the same type of struggle living in Smith this semester. Rather than moving into a beneficial, wellness-oriented environment this year, I entered what would be four months of holding-cell hell.
It began as little problems: No one seemed to be a Meadows student like me, there were no suitemates like in my previous dorm, and nobody came by to welcome me to the floor, let alone talk to me. Upon learning that most of the male population on my floor was immature, party-oriented freshmen, I realized that this dorm was not meant to be a haven for healthy individuals, but rather a Boaz-like spill-over dorm for those who did not get their first choice when choosing a dormitory.
Believe it or not, I was very active in the fine arts social scene before moving from beloved Peyton to the other side of Meadows, where Smith is located. Honestly, I enjoyed the wellness theme of Smith but truly just wanted the stress benefit of my own room and a little privacy. Unfortunately, the added distance caused problems for my social life, and Smith offered less privacy than my rooms in Peyton. The walls seem even more paper-thin because the rooms are so cramped together. In fact, the first sign of communication I got from both neighbors was knocking, not on the door as a sign of welcoming, but on either walls of my room adjacent to their rooms. This has been the extent of our conversations to this date. Because of their inappropriateness and failure to rat on the people across the hall who constantly made much louder sounds than I past quiet hours, I grew to despise these girls. It’s hard enjoying a dorm when the community bathroom is constantly filled with enemies of some sort, mainly either obnoxious communication-shy chicks with a grudge or obnoxious loud chicks who know they can break the rules and ruin other peoples’ lives.
As the year progressed, I felt more and more alone. Where were the happy, healthy, considerate and well-balanced floor mates I hoped to meet? Why was everything I did wrong merely because I was new and never staked my claim in the ability to break quiet hours like everyone else? Why won’t those idiot freshmen guys either turn down their bad music or buy something by musicians with talent?? No wonder the girl in my dorm before me left at the semester.
Things of course only got worse. My boyfriend and I began to be randomly hassled by drunk freshmen guys. One night, he was confronted by a complete belligerent in the men’s room. The resident clearly was smashed out of his mind as he verbally sexually harassed my boyfriend and I, questioning the legitimacy of the intimate moments my boyfriend and I share in the scant privacy of my room. That night, refusing to be oppressed anymore, I let it all out to Cori Cusker, the hall director of our floor. In an e-mail to her, I explained what had happened: the alcohol problem of the boys on my floor, third floor, the disgusting treatment of the men’s restroom, among other things, and all of my experiences and harassments since moving in. Her response, though she will most likely deny it, startled me. She essentially made me feel sorry for her hard new job of Smith-Perkins hall director. The students here are just plain uncooperative and immature. My RA is also weighed down by the horrible chemistry in Smith and is actually a fill-in for some poor guy who quit at the semester. All I can do, according to Cori Cusker, is wait for something bad to happen again from these drunk guys, probably something worse if you ask me, and then turn them in. She wanted me to find their names on my own and assess whether or not it was worthwhile to turn them in on my own. This certainly did not seem like the policies enacted by who I thought the wellness community hall director would be, but out of my desire to live peacefully in Smith, I believed that she knew best. I was also given the opportunity to hassle the RA on duty every time quiet hour violations occur and bother me, and trust me- it always happened to be the same guy on duty, and he didn’t like to be interrupted for anything: being locked out, being locked out again- well, let’s say we didn’t have the best meetings. My RA’s influence and duties regarding the quiet hour problems here never grew. Perhaps he was afraid of interrupting the sub-human standards of third floor. Even during finals week, despite big signs spelling out the new hours around the building, people are yelling, people are running around, and bass is thumping way past the noise cutoff time.
The result of this e-mail and meeting in person with my hall director was essentially my boyfriend and I generally living in fear and general avoidance when we were in the dorm, mainly that day-to-day we may have to deal with someone, anyone, while inside or outside of my tiny, claustrophobic dorm cell. Needless to say, this took a toll on our relationship, and we began to argue. I know college relationships are difficult, but I really feel having to deal with Smith made things much tougher than they would have been. I cried. We yelled. My neighbors called that surly RA on duty to come over and harass me, rather than for once in their lives come in and see how I was doing, sympathetically and humanely. After being told one night, about an hour into quiet hours, that I had to open my own door to tell the RA on duty what the hell was going on, I did, and was met by a stern and cold expression on a tired and cranky man. Knowing I could not stay in my own room to cry it out because of my hateful isolationist neighbors, I told him that I was having trouble with my boyfriend and after stepping in more closely, tears of hurt flowing down from my face, I told him to, “Have some compassion,” before leaving the room to be alone in the dark, outside the dorm with nowhere to go. Isolationism is impossible when walls are as paper-thin as they are in the dorms. It is only in times of crises that the value of a community comes forth.
The next day, I received the gift of an e-mail from Cori, telling me that the next noise violation I make will result in punishment, and my boyfriend received the gift of the idiot girls across the hall talking about me behind my back. Thankfully, he reassured the girls at least that on behalf of “that girl crying last night”‘s boyfriend, it’s generally better to act like a human and see what’s wrong when someone cries than to speculate about what was wrong. Though I stayed for a few weeks more, toughing it out among the constant oppression of ignorant individuals around me and while knowing I would never relate to half of the unpleasant things they would say in front of passers-by in the hall, I gave up. After a period of time, I moved back home to Plano in the middle of the night, abandoning every aspect of Smith besides my left-behind books and computer, which I use from time to time while I’m on campus.
This week, the Owen lot by Smith’s gate arm was broken. I wasn’t surprised that it happened so close to Smith. After reading about the Phoenix in the paper Tuesday, I flipped over to the police report page of the same paper. Apparently, a Smith resident was recently detained as a minor in possession of alcohol and in possession of a weapon on school premises. Not a big deal for me either, perhaps because of the feeling I get every time I pass the bold and blunt (forgive my pun) “B is for Bong” poster up on some guy’s door down the hall. It serves as just another justification of my case: Smith hall is nowhere near a wellness community. Though it may once have been a beacon for healthy and well-rounded individuals and those who want to be so, it is now overrun by hate, harassment, underage drinking and bad management. Just Wednesday morning, a student was sexually assaulted sleeping in another student’s Smith room by a third student, due to the dorm room’s door having been left open during the night, and was sent to Parkland Hospital for rape treatment. Because of these reasons, do not be fooled like the residents of the Phoenix, mesmerized by the beautiful yet not entirely representational pictures of their future homes. What SMU advertises Smith as is nowhere near the reality one truly endures after becoming a Smith resident. While nearby Perkins beams with its moral and religious population, Smith is more like a dorm filled with God’s rejects, on the third floor at least, and it doesn’t take a holy man to acknowledge this. I will most definitely thank my Creator the day I am truly free from Smith dormitory, having made it out in one piece, psychological scarring or no.
Elizabeth Wacker is sophomore cinema-television major. She can be reached at [email protected].
