RONDA COLLINS
SENIOR REPORTER

As I walk down the hall on my morning trudge to the bathroom, I try to dodge the garbage littering the floor. When I finally make it to the bathrooms I bypass the stalls that are all unusable thanks to last night’s partyers throwing up all over the place. I try to shower, but I’ll never feel clean because I live in residence and this residence is a dark contrast to the clean cut residence the brochures show.
Floors are full of teens out on their own, some for the first time, in tiny quarters, acting like animals just because they can. Without the structure and discipline they have at home, students run wild.
Food caked into the hall carpets, crude drawings scratched onto walls and behaviour till dawn that baffles my mind. Normal, rational kids suddenly get a taste of freedom and they turn into toddlers on a permanent sugar high. This ritual is ridiculous and something that should stop.
The total disregard for other humans includes screaming and yelling all night to the co-ed bathrooms where hard partying leads to unfortunate messes in the stalls. The convenient co-ed bathrooms are often covered in puke and are so dirty, they are not usable.
Students pay from $3,724.50-$8,449 for single rooms in R and S building and  $4,300-$9,600 for suite-style rooms where you get your own private bathroom. For the money I pay, I should not have to deal with such filth.
This week, the residence assistants on my floor instituted a zero tolerance policy on noise, stating that the floor was in bad shape and the residents are disrespectful of their fellow floor mates. The policy will have anyone caught making noise after hours fined $25.
The rowdiness extends past quiet hours, sometimes to dawn. I  find myself obsessing over when I should be going to bed so that I can get enough sleep. “If I go to bed at ten I should be used to the noise by twelve and be asleep by twelve-thirty…” etc.
The rules for noise, outlined in the Residence Handbook that each person receives when they move in, say excessive noise is noise that disturbs others in residence.
Security guards visit floors throughout the night, but they are ignored minutes after their warnings and departure. The residence assistants come out to deal with the noise, but they too are ignored.
Samantha Di Lorenzo, a student also living in residence, thinks the noise levels soar after quiet hours.
“It’s okay,” said Samantha. “Like, I like hanging out with people and I’m loud sometimes, but it’s actually pretty bad at night, like, it’s okay before quiet hours, I don’t mind till 12, and after that it’s kind of excessive.”
Samantha also said the quiet hours are understandable, but it is difficult for students to go from living with their families to newfound freedom. Indeed you can’t expect people to change quickly, but do they really act like animals at home? Yes, she makes a point, the adjustment from home life to the freedom of living on your own is hard, but should residence be a place for unruly brats?
No.
The residents are not the only ones having to deal with the problem. The cleaning staff have to clean up the messes every morning. It gets so bad that even though you might not have made the mess, you find yourself not being able to make eye contact with cleaning staff because you feel so ashamed of everyone on your floor.
Since the zero tolerance policy was put in effect a week ago the residents have been quiet when they are supposed to. I can only hope this new law will work and peace will continue.