Recently there have been a number of problems in my dorm with cleanliness in the most frequently used common area – the bathroom. There is a tendency for people to take a stance like, why work to keep clean what will always be messy? This isn’t true for everyone, and is probably held to different degrees by others. It seems we are expected to keep to a standard of common courtesy, however that standard is not the same for everyone. There are two things I’ve thought of that may help solve this problem.
On a practical level, the expectations for students can be put in writing and made available for us to read. A huge problem I’ve noticed is that it’s incredibly unclear to dorm residents the extent to which they are responsible for keeping things clean and likewise the extent to which we should rely on housekeeping.
A lot of times we act like we’re at a hotel and we expect housekeeping to erase any signs of us having been there. If you haven’t figured it out by now, that’s not the way housekeeping works at Northwestern. There have been several times when I step in the shower, see the mold that has been taking claim of the ceiling for months, and get the urge to just take care of it myself. From what I can tell, housekeeping basically just keeps the dorm livable.
As far as common courtesy goes, one possible solution is that if we treat the dorm like it belonged to us (which in a sense, it temporarily does) then we’ll be more inclined to care about doing as much on our end to respect shared spaces.
It’s hard to have respect for our things that come from true ownership. For a lot of us, most of the things we’ve owned over our lifespan technically belong to our parents. This is probably why parents are so adamant, for example, about making us clean our rooms but then do it themselves when we fail to make it happen.
Growing up, I always hated that I seemed to have more chores than my friends. I’ve been making my bed every morning since I was 2, doing yard work, laundry and scrubbing my bathroom since I was 7. (I’m not trying to sound morally superior-I had no choice in the matter.)
Whenever I had the audacity to ask why I was being asked to do housework, the answer was this: You’re a part of this family and you live in this house. It was about taking ownership of my environment, and as a result, taking ownership of the mess I made in that environment. As weird as this may sound, I think the same principle should be applied to living in a dorm.
Of these two solutions, I’d say the best would be the first, but at the moment we have no such thing. In the meantime I think it’s totally possible to start taking some ownership of the areas we share with our classmates. Feeling responsible for those areas will make us more inclined to care about keeping them clean, which will make life better for everyone.
Emily Avarado is a Medill sophomore. She can be reached at [email protected].
