As a freshman male at BYU, I am more or less required to live in Deseret Towers (motto: “Home of the Sheet Rock Pillows”). And while I generally enjoy dorm life — an outsider can’t possibly know the joys of walking into someone’s room and finding its occupants anxiously engaged in a Jergen’s lotion fight — I must admit that there are a few things I don’t like about DT. Naturally, I will be more than happy to share them with you.
– Every now and then, I run into a couple guys in the basement TV room who really, honestly, in their deepest inner souls, would rather watch “Studs” than David Letterman. This is, I think, one of the signs of the Last Days.
– The walls between the rooms appear to be made of brick, but, in actuality, are made of a sturdy cardboard, and you can hear a phone ringing through them two rooms down.
– Furthermore, sometimes someone’s phone will ring when there’s no one there to answer it, and the caller lets it ring — I’ve counted — three million times before giving up.
– Furthermore, there are approximately ten Hispanic students on my floor, all of whom speak primarily Spanish, although they can get by in English. As I type this, it is close to 2 in the morning, and they are all in the room next door, talking and laughing and singing really loud in Spanish. Now, I am not the slightest bit prejudiced against anyone, but I think that if people are going to talk and laugh and sing this loud, this late at night, they should at least have the decency to do it in a language that I can understand.
– Furthermore, do they honestly think that simply because there is a wall separating us, I cannot hear them every night when, like werewolves, they suddenly and mysteriously turn into mariachis?
– Every few weeks, we have room inspection. I don’t know which neo-Nazi wacko control freak came up with this idea — I certainly hope it wasn’t a general authority, considering the description I just gave him — but it’s a stupid idea. I mean, I can understand checking up every now and then to make sure we’re not in the process of damaging something permanently (e.g., cutting things out of the window glass), but I fail to see how whether or not my bed is made (it’s not, by the way) makes any difference in terms of my quality as a student. I suspect this is another instance of BYU trying to keep up its Oz-like image to the rest of the world — they want everyone to think we’re all neat and tidy. So I’ll do my part:
DESERET TOWERS RESIDENT ARE SLOBS! ALL OF US! There are old pizza boxes in my room that have mutated into brand-new organisms! Every article of clothing I own is currently spilling out of the closet and taking over the room, due to the fact that I haven’t done laundry since approximately October! There are bodies of previous room inspectors stuffed in my dresser drawers! Ha-ha!
But overall, I like it here.
(Eric D. Snider is a freshman at BYU from Lake Elsinore, California, and he just loves living in Deseret Towers, except for room inspection, which really irritates him, as he mentioned.)
I really hated room inspection.
In publication, the exclamation marks were removed from the last paragraph, as was the "ha-ha!" This made it seem less like a mad rant and more like a bored monologue. Perhaps this is the effect Earl the Editor was going for.
