<p>I would be interested in the RA’s side of the story. Has there been a history of the dorm’s facilities being messed up by drunken dorm residents?</p>
<p>I don’t understand why no one chose to clean it up. The concerns here about disease transmission I think are overstated. It’s gross, but not that hard to clean up vomit, and to do it in a sanitary way. I don’t remember ever using college bathroom that was fouled by vomit. I can’t imagine being used to such a thing.</p>
<p>Thank you for your replies. I know that sometimes it is best to just clean the mess up whether it is your mess or not…as you said, life is messy and we clean up lots of stuff…my H actually told him that he should have done it…we found out about the situation after the fact…I disagree…I am not sure that getting into the possible habit of cleaning up other people’s mess is necessarily a good thing…I told DS that this is a somewhat complicated issue and can be looked at many different ways…he hasn’t paid yet and I don’t think that he will pay without addressing the situation with the admin., etc. I guess he will learn a lot from this…I will let you know what, ultimately, happens. And…I do agree that this is HIS problem…I just wanted some feedback…thanks again!</p>
<p>This is really the grossest so prepare yourselves- when I was at college someone defecated in the middle of the floor in the downstairs lobby, right in front of the concession machines. There was no way I was coming within 20 feet of it. This was at a wonderful flagship state U- (#1 Kiplinger). Disgusting pig. Don’t know who cleaned it up.</p>
<p>At S’s former h.s. (that he transferred out of for senior year), people (students?) repeatedly defecated in the halls after hours and the unfortunate custodians would have to clean it up. </p>
<p>Talk about disgusting! I felt so sorry for the two overworked custodians, whom students had the nerve to complain about not keeping the large, very spread out school clean enough!</p>
<p><a href=“WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record”>WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record;
<p><a href=“WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record”>WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record;
<p><a href=“WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record”>WRAPS organizes campus-wide food drive, adapts to COVID restrictions – The Williams Record;
<p>I agree with Marian: I would never want my kid to clean up someone else’s vomit. Disease transmission is a big issue. I’m a nurse, so I’ve cleaned up my share (and worse) but with gloves, proper disposal methods, proper disinfecting products, etc. Kids living in a dorm don’t have that available, I’d guess. The RA sounds like a real jerk, and I’d really want to know who gets the $2000 fee. Everyone’s health & safety was compromised by his decision to “wait it out” for a confession.</p>
<p>I feel sorry for any janitor who has to work at a college. Vomit, feces, good Lord!</p>
<p>Pardon my ignorance, but what is a row house, or residence house? Is it a dorm? If so, why is the university allowing beer parties? Who is providing the alcohol? Why aren’t they being arrested (if the partygoers are underage)?</p>
<p>Row houses are old fraternity houses now used for “dorm” housing. (Fraternities were abolished in the mid-60s.)</p>
<p>Last year, they had several instances with students (male and female) defecating out windows (from the 3rd floor).</p>
<p>Why don’t they arrest? According to their own surveys, 29% of the student body is made up of heavy drinkers (near daily 2+ drinks a day), and more than half binge drink. Since rates are even higher for males, and for white students, if they were to do that fairly they’d have an empty campus. (The jail in Williamstown is awfully small - they’d have to use some of the row houses for holding. ;))</p>
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<p>It is not unusual when something happens in the dorm and no one steps utp that the dorm as a whole (including the RA) is fined. I know when my D was an RA someone dyed their hair magenta and made a really big mess in one of the bathrooms. When the young woman did not step up the whole floor including my D was at risked of being fined. When this happened, the floor mates confronted the girl and told her that she needed to step up because they were not all going to be penalized and pay for something that she did. Guess what? she paid the cleaning charge.</p>
<p>While being an RA makes you responsible for things that have happened on your watch, it does not make you the maid or means that you should literally be cleaning up after someone (you can and maybe should offer to help). If my daughter was the RA in this situation, I would have no problem telling her to get everyone up and we all clean if the guilty party does not step up. Guess what, someone would step up.</p>
<p>I think that large fines like what was mentioned in the situation involving the OP’s son is to create a level of cognitive dissonance or at least some peer pressure. </p>
<p>Personally, I have a bigger problem with the fact that everyone was willing to pay the $60 each, split or whatever rather than speak to the guilty party about what went on and to get him to clean it up because it is apparent that he thinks nothing of letting everyone else on the floor take the “fall” for him.</p>
<p>Maybe the student was so drunk they don’t remember throwing up?</p>
<p>Magenta hair dye is one thing. Potentially contaminated bodily fluids are another. </p>
<p>We moms have all cleaned up vomit in our own homes, and we don’t consider it that big a deal. But in most instances, we’re not terribly worried about disease transmission; if anyone in our household has a serious disease that can be transmitted by bodily fluids, such as AIDS or hepatitis B, we know it and know how to take appropriate precautions. If nobody has that sort of problem, we simply clean up the mess the same way we clean up other messes.</p>
<p>But a college dorm is not the family home. It is a public facility. There are rules about proper cleanup of contaminated materials in public facilities, and they’re not the same as what we all do at home. I was in a pediatric surgeon’s office recently, and there were signs all over the place practically begging parents not to put used diapers in the garbage cans. Apparently, it’s illegal to do this. In a medical office, used diapers must be treated as contaminated waste, not ordinary garbage. That’s the law. </p>
<p>I suspect that similar laws might apply to college dormitories. And even if they don’t, surely the college doesn’t want to be sued by a student who contracted a serious disease by cleaning up someone else’s vomit.</p>
<p>If the OP’s son wants to avoid that fine, I suggest that he write a letter something like this:</p>
<p>*Dear Housing Official,</p>
<p>I live in [name of dorm]. On [date,] there was a problem on my floor. Somebody vomited in the bathroom and did not clean it up. Our RA, [name of RA], said that the person who caused the problem should clean it up or we would all pay a fine. When nobody cleaned it up, the RA imposed a $60 fine on each person on the floor.</p>
<p>When my friends and I talked about this situation afterward, we decided that maybe we should have cleaned up the mess ourselves to avoid the fine. But a friend of my mom’s who is a nurse told me something completely different. [You’re not lying here. Your mom’s friend is StickerShock, about five posts below this one.] She said that it’s only safe to clean up someone else’s vomit if you take the kind of precautions that she takes when she does it at work – like wearing special gloves and using a certain kind of disinfectant – and that the contaminated materials should be disposed of in special containers. None of us in the dorm know how to do this. We don’t even know whether the dorm has the necessary equipment.</p>
<p>If something like this happens again, what are we supposed to do? We don’t want to pay any more fines, but we don’t want to take chances with our health, either. Are we supposed to clean up vomit or not?*</p>
<p>Hey, it’s worth a try.</p>
<p>I am curious as to why the RA collected $60 from each resident. Were they required to pay cash, or could they write a check to the university? Were there any receipts given? Was that money all needed to pay for the cleanup, or did some find its way into someone’s pocket? Is this action sanctioned by the university? </p>
<p>BTW, I work in a hospital too, and there is NO WAY that students should be asked to clean up that mess. I would question the entire situation of the inappropriate request and the resulting fines.</p>
<p>Excuse me, but students have been cleaning up vomit – their own and others’ – for generations. Generally without mishap. (There is a funny bit in Brideshead Revisited where Sebastian vomits and Charles starts to clean it up, and Sebastian says no, his runner will do it, that’s what they’re for.) I understand that there is a concern with disease transmission, and surely it’s the RA’s responsibility to know where the rubber gloves, disinfectant, and fluid bags are, but cleaning up vomit without ingesting it is a basic life skill, not rocket science. And this is a dorm, not a hospital. When someone throws up on the floor in a hospital, there’s a high likelihood that some disease is involved. When someone throws up on the floor in a dorm, there’s a high likelihood that he had too much to drink. </p>
<p>The kids should have cleaned it up, period. The kids who were responsible (either directly or indirectly), and failing them any of the kids. If they didn’t, the RA should have drafted cleaners without playing “Gestapo”, and let the kids figure out who had shirked his moral responsibilities and who hadn’t. </p>
<p>Those of you who are getting all prissy about this are all assuming (a) that it’s someone else’s job to clean it up correctly, and (b) that the person who vomited lives on the floor. Neither is necessarily the case.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how sad this thread makes me. Even if it’s not the case in society at large, I would have hoped that on a single floor of a dorm of an elite college, the basic moral principles still held that you clean up your own vomit, and if you find vomit on your (community) floor that no one has cleaned up you take responsibility and clean it up.</p>
<p>Can someone educate me?</p>
<p>If it is potentially dangerous to one’s health to clean up vomit, why is not dangerous to let it be in the open for hours on end? Don’t students need to use the bathroom?</p>
<p>Edit: cross-posted with JHS, with whom I agree entirely.</p>
<p>“I can’t tell you how sad this thread makes me. Even if it’s not the case in society at large, I would have hoped that on a single floor of a dorm of an elite college, the basic moral principles still held that you clean up your own vomit, and if you find vomit on your (community) floor that no one has cleaned up you take responsibility and clean it up.”</p>
<p>I agree, but at some (a-hem) institutions of higher learning (such as the one I posted the link for) it is a lot more than a single floor (or a single incident), and that will mean an awful lot of scrubbin’. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>It should have been cleaned up, and how hard would it have been for some students to go to a drug store, get some supplies- dustpan, little broom, rubber gloves and disinfectent, and paper towel- maybe $25.00 to get the good stuff? shared 4-5 ways, well, pretty cheap, and I would have gone to the others on the floor and said- next time, its your turn</p>
<p>brush up vomit into dustpan- as much as possible, put ALL into triple bags, finish with paper towels, and disinfectant</p>
<p>last week, I had to clean up vomit in a car that my D was in (vomiteer had been dropped home, with mom standing at the door)</p>
<p>it was gross, but I did it</p>
<p>for ALL the students to leave it there was just sad</p>
<p>I go to the beach monthly and pick up other peoples garbage so that MY environment is nice</p>
<p>Imagine if a parent had walked in on that mess on the floor</p>
<p>The RA should have given them 1 hour, and looking back, I don’t think $60 was so bad for a bunch of spoiled kids who couldn’t be bothered keeping their cave clean</p>
<p>Unfair, sure, but being a man means stepping up and taking care of business…looks like that floor only had little boys on it</p>
<p>remember, this was a sunday, they had all day to figure out what to do, but choice to live in a smelly mess</p>
<p>they deserved that, btw</p>
<p>I don’t blame the RA one bit the more I think about it- with males who aren’t man enough to step up and do the right thing- for that $60 is cheap</p>
<p>If there were a culture of students cleaning it up, maybe there would be less of it to clean.</p>
<p>well said JHS</p>
<p>at my Ds school, if any mess AT ALL is left after lunch, they ALL clean it up, and you know what, less mess, and the kids call each other on it,- hey , don’t forget your trash…its all of their school and for the kids that leave a mess, they get the “look” - you know the teenage look of death we have all gotten</p>
<p>Apparently this situation is very common, not just the obvious: kid puking in bathroom, but the entire floor being fined and some feeling the fine is unjust…</p>
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<p>The only person in charge is the RA, and he was too busy administering collective punishment to worry about details like actually solving the problem.</p>
<p>And actually the person I blame is not the RA; I blame the student who actually did the vomiting and left it for others. There is an unwritten but strictly obeyed rule in the US Air Force that if you get air sick and vomit in a plane, you clean it up, even if you are a four star general. No one is so high and mightly that they can compel another person to clean up their puke for them.</p>