Residence halls may be the home away from home for many college students, but it doesn’t mean they take care of them the way they would their own homes.

“If somebody walks on a floor that’s already messy, it’s much easier to make it messier,” Carman Hall resident director Doug Howell said.

Erin Karson, a junior English major and resident assistant in Lawson Hall, said maintaining clean dorms is the job of the resident.

“Every residence hall has a vaccum cleaner at the front desk,” she said. “It should be (the resident’s) responsibility. There’s no reason to call a Building Service Worker at an hour when they are not working for something the residents can do themselves.”

Andrews Hall resident director Sehr Saghir said her hall does not have problems with students taking the initiative.

“Andrews Hall has not had any problems with vandalism or dirtiness. Our girls are very responsible and hygene oriented,” she said.

“Lawson is very well kept. The BSWs really take ownership of the building. I would be proud to have anybody’s parents walk through any floor, at any time,” Tanya Kozlowski, Lawson Hall assistant resident director, said.

Kozlowski estimates that about 90 percent of the residents of Lawson are satisfied with their residence hall.

“What the girls do after the BSWs leave is their own fault,” Karson said. “And at times it can be messy.”

Karson said in the past her floor did have a garbage issue earlier this year, but since then, the girls have made an effort to improve their habits.

“This semester cleanliness has greatly improved,” Karson said.

Common issues in female residence halls and floors are markers being stolen off dry-erase boards, derogatory comments written on bulletin boards and people’s doors, and sanitation products left open in the bathroom.

Junior English major Eileen Boucher, a Taylor resident assistant, offers an outlet for her residents to air their frustrations.

“{my residents} are more than welcome to write issues on the bathroom mirror,” she said. “But it cannot be offensive.”

Stuart Kaeding, residence director of Thomas Hall, said the building is maintained well in general, with lobby furniture recently reupholstered.

“Periodically we have maintenance requests, and try to follow up with those quickly,” he said.

Taylor resident Mark Wonderlin, a junior Speech Communications major, a transfer student who has lived in Taylor since last semester, said all is not rosy in the dorms.

“On Friday and Saturday, there is consistently blatant disrespect,” Wonderlin said. “When people are drunk, they’ll rip down posters, leave stuff in the hall, even urinate on doors.'”

Wonderlin offered suggestions on how to improve the residence halls.

“Spend a little extra money and get some new carpeting in the hall,” he said.

Howell said: “Carman Hall has always had a bad reputation on campus, but it’s not true. This is a great place to live.

“The students that are causing the problems are the ones that don’t know the BSWs and do not care that somebody else has to clean up the messes they make for no reason.”

Howell said it seems the floors with more returning students “tend to be better behaved.”

One way Carman handles student messes is to assign community service by requiring students to pick up all the trash around the building for two weeks, for a certain length of time each day, or work directly with the BSWs on their shifts.

When students are assigned to work alongside BSWs, they are typically given work that is normally not done except during school vacations. Such work consists of dusting door frames and video games, cleaning the bulletin board glass, and washing down the walls.

The BSWs would have more time to do these things regularly themselves if not preoccupied by routine tasks such as constantly having to clean the floors and other unneccessary messes, Howell said.

“We don’t flush toliets, clean our sinks, and throw up in the hall on weekends, as well as blatantly smoke on the floor,” admitted freshman Social Sciences major and Carman resident, Jason Knodle. “The (BSWs) do a good job picking up after us.”

BSWs must attend to other things, according to BSW Subforeman, Jane Lovell.

“Every day the elevators are just covered with spit, even the buttons,” Lovell said. “Pizza boxes are stuffed into toliets, there is deliberate urinating on toliet paper,” and in one area of Carman, some residents completely kicked down two outside glass doors.

“The students are allowed to get away with way too much. Not everybody does it, just a few who make the others look bad. The boys towers are the worst.”

This kind of vandalism creates an extra problem because it takes extra time for the BSWs to maintain, and this leads to them having less time for the other floors, Lovell said. This is because every BSW is responsible for two or three floors, and possibly other extra areas like stairwells, lobbies, and basements, Saghim said.

“The BSWs are not our parents,” Boucher said. “Why make something dirty when it’s clean?”