BY MOLLY PIELS and MAIRIN ODLE

In print | Published May 1, 2008

This being our last column (whew), we wanted to talk about the easiest etiquette topic we could think of (finals are coming, and we don’t have that much space in our brains for complicated things): living in dorms, with two groups of people — your neighbors and your EVS techs — to both of whom it is very easy to be rude. Since dorms breed rudeness and Swarthmore breeds awkwardness, whatever Swarthmore dorms breed is a whole other animal. Just because you moved out of your parents’ house, don’t let it go to your head. Your parents didn’t invent those mysterious rules about cleaning things and sharing and chewing with your mouth closed just to torture you (we think). They have some basis in your parents’ experiences of what is necessary to get along with others, lessons that they may have learned as callow youths themselves.

The first lesson to learn when living quasi-independently is that the magical time-saving device called the microwave is by no means idiot- or ramen-proof. It can set things on fire (no metals, please), melt things (certain plastics and some peoples’ hearts) and will not stop automatically upon making your food boil over. Once your food spills in the microwave, its resident cleaning gnomes will not render it shiny and new for the next user — If there is ramen juice on the tray when you leave, there will be ramen juice on the tray for the next person, or if it goes long enough untouched, dehydrated ramen residue. We do not want our oatmeal to taste like shrimp ramen, okay?

The microwave perfectly exemplifies the “tragedy of the common room.” One person’s leftover Chinese food spills in the microwave, someone else’s soda ends up on one side of the couch, another person misses the trash bin with their yogurt container, at a wild party a week ago the couch broke, none of them clean up after themselves … and suddenly making popcorn and watching a movie becomes a nauseating proposal rather than a relaxing night in. To review one of those all-important things you were supposed to learn in kindergarten, if you had been paying attention instead of cutting your own bangs and pretending to be a cat: if you make a mess, clean it up. Trash is meant to snuggle inside its little trashcan home, and if you feel the strong temptation to make a three-pointer with your Doritos bag (and don’t we all?), you must make the rebound when you miss. Advanced trashcan usage requires timing the cleaning of murky corners of your fridge and other smelly objects in your life with the removal of trash from your dorm. This means that Friday afternoon is not an optimal time for the final demise of your five-year-old athletic shoes, since we’ll have to smell them until Monday when the trash is removed.

Another concept from kindergarten that applies well to college dorm life: treat others the way you would like to be treated. If someone has left their shampoo and toothpaste in the bathroom, that does not make it communal property. You might think, sure, but I’m just taking a teensy bit, but when you and ten other people on the hall think the same thing, suddenly that shampoo bottle is empty and suddenly your RA’s hair is looking suspiciously dirty. If someone leaves their laundry in the machines, please don’t dump their clothes on the floor. No one expects you to fold their socks, but putting things on top of a dryer would be nice. You wouldn’t like it, we assume, if someone stole your toothpaste, dumped your newly clean interview outfit on the grimy basement floor, or left a mouse-sized wad of hair in the showers, so it’s always a good bet that you should not inflict these things on others.

Speaking of the Golden Rule, we think that many of the problems caused by slovenly dorm dwellers would be alleviated if everyone kept in mind the EVS techs who work hard to keep dorms clean, despite the massive entropy caused by hundreds of college students. Instead of thinking in the passive voice, “This gets cleaned,” (perhaps by the same gnomes in the microwave?), try thinking instead, “Someone cleans this up.” And etiquette is all about making other peoples’ lives easier, not harder, whether that person be your EVS tech, roommate, your professor, Sharples employees or even us, that pair of grumpy seniors trying to study near you in the library. Recognizing that you have an etiquette problem is the first step, and being supposedly ‘awkward’ or ‘really stressed’ (because those are unique problems around here) does not excuse you from the obligation to make everyone else’s lives less awkward and less stressed. We realize that no one’s perfect, even etiquette fairies like us. We’ve missed a lot of deadlines (sorry Tiffany!), been a little too loud in the hallway at 2 a.m. and probably talked with our mouths full an awful lot. Unlike Swarthmore College, however, we give A’s for effort.

Molly and Mairin are seniors. You can reach them at mpiels1@swarthmore.edu and lodle1@swarthmore.edu.

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