Hey, weirdos. Last week I ate zero ham sandwiches. Okay, anyway:
So, I got accepted to Yale; I'll be matriculating in the fall, and I met some pretty weird people there while visiting a couple of months ago. I'm wondering: There was some weird, hairy, bearded guy sleeping in my temporary dorm room, and he said something like he was unofficially attending and excited about majoring in child development or something. Anyway, he was freaking out that night, and I was wondering: If I'm living in my dorm room sometime next year and a really weird person decides to just jump in my room and sleep there, should I just let him sleep and live there? I mean, at Yale, I've been told, we're all just one big family (and as we all know, private property rights suck), but is it okay if I kick him out? I don't know what to do if some person just decides to live with me without my consent (I'm also pretty nonconfrontational and all, so....). Also, I feel like any person should be allowed to attend the classes at Yale, because education should be free for everyone, so could somebody give me some advice? Yes, thank you.
You can absolutely kick him out. It's your room! If you're nervous to do it, ask one of your suitemates, or campus security, or anybody really. I highly doubt you'll run into this again. Yale's definitely a big family, but I interpret that as my friends are welcome whenever, and if an alum or student ever contacted me for help or anything, I'd do my best to help them out. People can attend most Yale classes (unofficially) by just walking in, so that's not an issue.
Out of curiosity, could you elaborate on the weird sleepover story? Why did you have a temporary dorm room? Non-Yale students don't have access to the dorms, so this is just really strange! I can pretty much guarantee you that this won't happen again haha.
Sure, it happened while I was at Bulldog Days and was staying in a suite with a few current Yalies. Basically, along with me and another prefrosh, a weird, bearded guy who was not a student at Yale was squatting in the suite and had been doing so for several months. He was a friend of one of the students who lived in the suite, and because he hadn't been accepted to Yale, he was sleeping on the friend's couch/floor, mooching off of his friend for cafeteria food, and sitting in on classes as if he were a student during the day. Whenever a professor mentioned that he wasn't enrolled in a class, he said, he would say something to the effect of "Oh, I'd better check with the enrollment office about that," and when the professor inquired again a few weeks later, "oh, do I need to check with the enrollment office again?An "unofficial Yale education" he called it.
His plan (not a bad one for someone in his situation, really) was to continue mooching off of his friend and the college for another year (he'd already been doing it for four or five months) and reapply to Yale after that, when he could say, "I'm already basically a student here anyways, so you might as well make it official." His story would exhibit a great deal of determination, I guess, if nothing else.
But anyway, I'm a bit worried about what I would do next year if one of my suitemates brings along a leech like this man. I mean, I'm all for sharing and whatnot, but the amount of space in door rooms is pretty limited, and I don't really want to support freeloading leeches, anyway.
Something of the sort apparently happened about 5 years ago at Stanford: Big Scam on Campus? - ABC News
(not sure whether the person attended classes, or just obtained information about exam dates from course web sites). This past year, there was a non-student living in a Stanford dorm, but because it's the west coast, he wasn't attending classes--he was working on a start-up with Stanford students.
And kudos to Hunt--I had the show Hank (which I do recall for its inclusion of "Phi Beta Kappa key" in the theme song) mixed up with Dobie Gillis.
I liked "Hank." I imagine that we watched it because it was on at the same time as "Wild Wild West," which I wasn't allowed to watch because it was too violent.
Um, no. I'm not a troll and I've never heard of "Hank." Not sure what I can do to convince you guys of the authenticity of my story, but if there's anything you want to know about it, do tell. The guy was in JE, by the way.
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Your question is really not Yale-specific, right? Maybe you'd get more responses on a broader subforum. The real issue seems to be something along the lines of: What if my roommates want to do something in the suite that feels risky/uncomfotable/unappealing to me? Yeah, so, what would you do? The obvious choices are: 1) shut up and let them do whatever they want, 2) Speak up, make your concerns known, and expect them to accomodate your concerns or to negotiate with you in order to find a reasonable compromise.
How is this a Yale-specific issue? Students doing boneheaded things that their roommates must either put up with or decide to challenge them about is par for the course. You need to know how to stand up for yourself politely.
