<p>S1’s floor was charged $11 per kid first quarter for personal trash left in the community bathroom (students are expected to take their room trash downstairs to dumpster, not stick in bathroom trashcan for cleaning service to empty).
Nothing charged second quarter. I guess the kids eventually learned!</p>
<p>No charge from either S’s big state u’s. I know S1’s freshman dorm had some incidents but no fees were assessed. S2’s current freshman dorm is a pit. It is to be closed next year for renovations. I’m assumming there was nothing they could do to hurt it,lol.</p>
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<p>jym, </p>
<p>I’m not sure exactly what happened – he said some freshmen got drunk and damaged some things but everyone on that floor was charged because no one would own up to who did the damage. They had new masters last year so maybe that had something to do with it — setting ground rules and all that. Who knows?</p>
<p>We never paid any damamge fees for DD during the three semesters she was on-campus, nor the three semesters DS has been on-campus at Rice. DS is moving off-campus to a cool duplex only a few blocks away, with some friends. Cheaper than the residential colleges, and I think they’ll take good care of it. If not, the landlord has $1000 of DS’s money as guarantee! :eek:</p>
<p>Both my kids’ colleges charge per floor damage to the whole floor. It annoyed me too but unless they catch culprits in the act, there doesn’t seem to be a better solution. A lot of stealing from one floor to replace damages from another floor also went on to avoid paying.</p>
<p>We had 10.00 the first year and none the second, I really think the sub-free aspect helped, because one party dorm had over a 1000 dollar damage or more. It was mostly done by students that were drunk or just making really stupid choices. I don’t see how they can do much about it without anyone telling (which occasionally happens with something large)</p>
<p>Don’t blame it all on the drunk students. I was appalled at how the dorm looked on the final day, junior year, as students left their dorm in haste. </p>
<p>In a beautiful central lobby, they threw piles of unclosed garbage bags in a heap, ten feet high. Liquids of all kinds, including beer but also various hair products, chemicals and soda, were leaking all over a beautiful hardwood floor. </p>
<p>Furniture was being tossed out of windows, not carried to dumpsters.</p>
<p>Everyone was in a rush. The college closed dorms very soon after finals, and kids were rushing to meet planes…so the crunch came in how they departed the dorm. What a mess.</p>
<p>I can’t assess the damage to refinish the hardwood floor I saw, but surely the college could, and did. I whispered to my S, who is a personally responsible for money and goods, “Who would do that to their parents’ money…” and he just grimaced and said, “Mom, don’t even go there.” An unshared attitude, but one he had learned to live with among overprivileged students. </p>
<p>Aside from common area clean-ups, his college had an admirable system whereby room damage was assessed in terms of distance from individual bedrooms. In his case, he incurred no room damage and very small amounts for his hallway section (less than $l0). Other hallway sections had much higher damage assessments reflecting the 8 bedrooms per hallway section.</p>
<p>This might also account for that tall, leaking heap in the main lobby. There was yet another answer there: one kid called the college to clean out the dumpster, but the college couldn’t come fast enough for them. When the dorm dumpster was full, “what else could they do” but put it all in their living room? (Hunh?) Fact is, they were too lazy and believed themselves too rushed to close bags properly and walk them alongside the dumpster, to save their parents those fees. It was an attitude problem from the kids, and l0 years later it still steams me.</p>
<p>^^^^^^ ewwww. That deserves a fine, IMO.</p>
<p>My son warned me that his whole freshman floor will be losing their damage deposit. I don’t remember the amount. From week one, he’s said that kids in his dorm are very immature and constant vomit clean-up is the norm. He totally sympathizes with the university.</p>
<p>After the end of S1’s freshman year, we received a bill from the school for roughly $40 and were told that it had been assessed to all freshmen for “general damages to community facilities” in the freshman quad. S1 said there were indeed visible damages (paint spilled on floor, holes in wall, etc.) but no one knew who had done what. We did not receive any similar bills in the following years of on-campus housing.</p>
<p>natmicstef-
Never thought about the kids restocking their floor’s supplies by “shopping” for them on another floor. Hmmm…</p>
<p>Yes, we have paid for these community type damages once a year on our St. Lawrence University bill, but usually it is under $20.00 or so.</p>
<p>Just found out son’s deposit is $100 and he is losing ALL of it. Now he is upset and has scheduled a meeting with the dorm director for a detailed account. In the meantime, husband is bringing spackle to repair the door knob “dent” in his wall tonight.</p>
<p>Universities should seriously just cover that in the cost of housing. Cleaning/damage. If something gets broken in my room, I just call and put in a work order and they come and fix it. Given how much business this would mean for cleaning services, I’m sure they could work out a pretty good deal.</p>
<p>On the other hand, last year, I left my dorm in a total mess last year (pieces of plaster taken off the wall when I took my bulletin board off the wall, no vacuuming, no cleanup lol) and I didn’t get charged a cent. I guess maybe that’s because I wasn’t the last person to check out. Either that or that room was in such a dismal state that they were going to repaint the room anyways.</p>
<p>Just got back from inspecting son’s dorm and his room and maybe $100 is justified. They already replaced one set of horizontal mini-blinds, but he claimed they were broken when he moved in. I don’t remember that being the case when we moved him in. His towel bar is bent. A wooden slat is falling off a piece of furniture. There is a dent on his wall from a door knob. Just last night someone spray painted on the outside of his dorm. He guestimates that 5 exit signs have been broken on his dorm wing. At least 4 steps have had the treads peeled off. A security camera lens has a big crack through the middle of it. An exit door had half of the handle broken off. He told me that someone took all the furniture from the common areas and put it in the stairwell this week, blocking the doorways to the stairs, and almost causing him be late for a final exam. What a bunch of animals!</p>
<p>First year husband thought he fixed the bookcase in son’s dorm. When it broke later in semester son was charged maybe $10. Learned to report all damage at check in. Dorm students were charged for damage when culprit wasn’t caught, always < $10, so acceptable. One year a toilet was cemented to the rock mascot. The school was going to charge each dorm resident $100. They called the toilet hazardous waste or something. Students bought sledge hammers and took the toilet off–no fee was charged. I was ready to calll and protest. The “damage” was probably not done by the dorm residents.</p>
<p>Just returned from retrieving DS from school. During several of the elevator rides to bring down all his stuff, I heard several discussions of the kinds of things they were being fined for (apparently a general email goes out to all dorm residents). Definitely falls under the category of TMI.</p>
<p>^^^What is TMI?^^^</p>
<p>My daughter’s monthly bursar’s bill just arrived, and she was billed 59 cents for her share of some sort of community damage. She lives in a 400-student building, so there must have been some damage that cost a couple of hundred dollars to repair.</p>
<p>DD’s school does assess a damage fee to all occupants of a room IF there is damage. The residence life staff walks through the room with the pre-occupancy form (on which any previous damage is supposed to have been noted at the start of the school year) and notes any damage that was not previously there. The damage fee is split between the occupants. If there is no damage noted, no fee is assessed.</p>