<p>I’m not a lawyer, but I have never heard of individual charges for damage to common areas, whether it’s in a dorm, an apartment complex, an office building, or even a city. I think it should be covered by the rent. And unless it’s in the lease, it may be illegal.</p>
<p>beolein, my dorm does a 50 dollar charge to the whole dorm every time the outside doors are propped open. They punish everybody so the people who actually do it get pressured not to do it.</p>
<p>Wow…everyone’s saying that it happens all the time, but my hall hasn’t had problems at all. Sure, it’s policy that if anything happens, the whole hall pays, but no one’s done anything like that yet. Everyone here’s really mature and I can’t really imagine anyone doing that sort of thing…</p>
<p>Maybe I just got lucky</p>
<p>Girls-only floors, ime, tend to have less problems. But it really depends on the floor maturity level.</p>
<p>It’s a girls-only floor, but it’s the whole dorm overall that does all this, not just my floor,it’s mostly guys floors I think that do this stuff.</p>
<p>My D has been an RA for 2 years and nothing like this has ever happened in her three years at a mid-level state school. Frankly, I think that if this is a relatively common occurrence, the school should put up cameras and expel the perpetrators.</p>
<p>Where I once lived, about 90% of the mischief things occurred was done by guests of students of the dorm. They had these “dont admit people from the outside who don’t have cards” and “escort your guests out of the dorm” but no one really followed it.</p>
<p>I’d love to discover that charging everyone for vandalism to common areas is illegal in CT. I’m not asserting that it is or isn’t, but my D is <em>highly</em> annoyed that she is being charged for exit sign vandalism. This was an upperclass dorm, BTW. She is contesting one vandalism charge since it occurred <em>after</em> she officially moved out of the building. Her complaint is that they have security cameras, so they should be able to determine the perp.</p>