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After
living in the dorms for almost four years, I’ve seen many different
programs put on by the residence hall staffs. I’ve also attended most
of them, even though a lot of the time, I wish that I hadn’t even
bothered.
I’ve
seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to residence hall
programs, and since this week alone I’ve seen advertising for both
good and ugly, I thought that I would use this column to discuss this
little problem in the dorms.  I have seen homeless make better signs
Since
it’s more fun, I’m going to start with the ugly. Up until this afternoon,
I thought that dorm programs only fell into two categories: good and
bad. This afternoon, however, the “intelligent” people who run my
dorm had to prove me wrong by posting signs for the worst dorm program
that I have ever heard of. The sign read: “Come smoke a cigar! Mon
7:00 PM Meet in the lobby” Looking past the poor grammar and awful
handwriting, which is really hard for me since I am an admitted grammar
snob (and no, I’m not seeking treatment) this program alone is the
dumbest idea that I’ve ever heard of. “Come smoke a cigar!”? What
brain-dead moron thought that that would be a good program for a university
dorm? Why didn’t they just write the signs so that they would be totally
factual: “Come join us in a disgusting habit that kills people and,
if you do it often enough, it’ll kill you too!” I was extremely
tempted to go onto every floor in my dorm and rip these idiotic signs
down before going down to the lobby at seven and asking whoever is running
this program what on Earth they were thinking and whether or not they
had been dropped on their head as a child. Out of respect for them,
I decided to just bite my lip and hold my tongue. But I just couldn’t
stop myself from writing about it.
Now
that I’ve got THAT out of my system, let’s move on to the bad. As
a freshman living in Stephenson Hall, I received a notice in my mail
that there was going to be a mandatory all-hall meeting the Sunday before
finals week of fall semester. Unless I’m much mistaken, the notice
also mentioned something about some sort of punishment for people who
didn’t come to the meeting. Knowing that there was nothing they could
do to me if I didn’t go to the meeting, but curious to know why they
would take such ridiculous measures to get the hall to attend this meeting,
I went and discovered that it was a holiday party, complete with silly
little cards, small bags of candy, and chips of all varieties. On the
big screen, they were playing the film “Elf” and they even had the
awful judgment of not turning the heaters up in the Stephenson Down-under
so that it would actually be warm during the “party.” When I asked
one of the residence advisors why they had lied and said that it was
an important, mandatory meeting, she just shrugged and said: “We really
wanted a lot of people to come.” Like that’s any kind of excuse
for such a stupid decision.
Finally,
I will discuss the one good residence program that I’ve attended.
Last week, signs appeared on every floor of my building announcing that
the building had gotten a Netflix account and would begin showing movies
for free on the twelfth floor. As a great enjoyer of movies, this made
me very happy, a feeling that was increased by the fact that the sign
was actually made with some time and thought put into it. The sign was
actually typed up and used the best grammar that I’ve ever seen on
an elevator adjacent sign.
So,
to review, if any of you readers happen to currently be RA’s or are
thinking about becoming one in the future, here are the do’s and don’ts
of putting on a hall program:
- DO put time into
the sign. Type it up, and use an interesting font. More people will
be willing to read it.
- DON’T handwrite
the sign. You may have unreadable handwriting which will keep people
from coming to the event. Also, poor handwriting on a sign is just tacky.
- DO think about what
kind of program you would actually want to go to and use that as a ruler
for what kind of program you put on for others.
- DON’T put on a
program that is basically designed to kill people. See “the ugly”
above.
- DO use proper grammar
or you’ll just annoy people like me and there are more of us than
you’d think. If you don’t believe me, see the Facebook group “I
judge you when you use poor grammar.”
- DON’T try to make
people think that the program is something that it isn’t. That’ll
just piss people off and you don’t want a bunch of annoyed people
at your program. Be honest, you only want people there who want to be
there.
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