Tacks Reform

IFOOLED them. I pulled my tacks out of the wall and meticulously filled the holes with little balls of poster gum. The Superintendent didn't catch me. But she caught everyone else.

My next-door neighbor was charged for having six tacks in his ceiling. Fifty bucks. Another dormmate was slapped with a $275 bill for things like hanging a picture on a nail that was pounded in before she came to Harvard. Several suites were charged $20 for having scotch tape on brick. My entry alone owes Harvard more than $1000 in "room misuse" fees.

These dollars, according to Kathy Bray-Stazinski, Facilities Superintendent of first-year dormitories, flow into a "Facilities Fund for cosmetic and practical repairs of buildings."

I tried to find out exactly how much cash was in that little kitty, but the spokesperson for the superintendent's office said he only talked to upper-class reporters. Being a first-year student, he said, made my objectivity unreliable.

The "room misuse" fines are highway robbery. The fines are generally much higher than the price of buying a new square foot of paneling, installing a new wooden slat, or repainting a wall. But then again, that's not what the money is used for. It goes to replenish the coffers of the superintendent's office.

Theoretically, the money my dorm neighbors pay to the fund will someday pay to spruce up the paint in Hollis, fix a door hinge in Grays, or repair the hole in the ceiling of Matthews Hall.

BUT for the damage caused in the charged culprit's suite, the money will be of no use. Those tack holes aren't really going to be filled in. In reality, when you write checks to Harvard for decorating misdeeds, you are paying an arbitrary amount of money as punishment.

In other words, if you tack a poster to your wall and make a hole, you are charged not for the repair of the tackhole, but merely for the evil act of using the tack.

If you're a rebel and stick another tack in the same tack hole next semester, reasoning like any good Harvard student that no further damage could be done, you will be fined again in the spring when the superintendent reinspects the room. And you'll shell out another 50 bucks.

That is, you will if you're an unfortunate first-year student. The fact is that the enforcement of the poster-gum standard is incredibly capricious. The students in my dorm are paying for every nick and scratch, while one senior who pasted checkered wall-paper all over her bathroom got off scot-free, just like another senior who says he left his coffee pot on during winter break.

The facilities people probably expect that exorbitant fines will be a deterrent to would-be offenders. Perhaps so. Capital punishment may be a deterrent, too, but that doesn't make it right.

AMORE fair and appropriate way to deal with room abuse by Harvard students would be to assess the damages of each case independently and charge students for the estimated cost of repairing the damage. Of course, wooden slats aren't going to be replaced every year because of one or two tackholes. That's impractical and wasteful.

It is reasonable to argue that a student who makes tack holes in a wooden slat or uses tape on a painted wall is contributing to an eventual need for repair, and thus should incur an appropriate charge. But this charge shouldn't be 20 dollars per tack. The sums my dormmates have to pay for their sins grossly exceed the amount of damage done.

Surely, Harvard students should be responsible enough to care for their suites, and failing that responsibility should result in fines. But the haphazard assignment of inflated charges is simply unfair.

And I still can't figure out how scotch tape can damage a brick wall.