I recently received an email from my RD in Clayton, who expressed his concern with the condition of the Clayton basement. For a couple consecutive days, cleaning staff had to deal with the generous mess that was left behind courtesy of some Clayton residents, probably after a night of (what else?) drinking.

Pictures displaying the damage done were attached to the email, and a quick look at them revealed the offenders spared no square inch in their thoughtless behavior. Couches were upturned, trash littered the floor and draping from corner to corner of the basement were paper towels. Clayton’s cleaning staff was left to clean up the mess, not only once, but twice.

This sort of behavior angers me. I’m not going to say that the behavior was childish, because it wasn’t. It was, however, the behavior you would expect from a wild animal. Do you know what separates us from other species on earth? Common sense. Logic. You wouldn’t know it though, because human thought far too often seems nonexistent with the way some of our fellow peers act.

Sometimes we need to think beyond ourselves and consider that for reckless actions, there are consequences. On the most basic level, vandalism is a punishable offense and you would probably have to pay a fine for any considerable damages.

On an even deeper level, there are consequences pertaining to your morals. Every time you choose to engage in destructive behavior, your principles begin to deteriorate. What’s the difference between right and wrong? The line becomes blurrier with every bad decision. If you intentionally spill a beer on the communal couch just to rake up a few laughs and believe it’s “not a big deal,” you are already spiraling down into the type of person who won’t truly become an adult until the age of 40, when your parents finally kick you out of the house and force you to get a job.

Also, at what point are such antics considered wrong? Would it be, by chance, when someone ruins an item of yours? It’s a very selfish way to rationalize, yet I suspect there are more than a handful of people who feel this way: “If I trash the communal basement then it’s funny, but if someone does the same to my stuff then it’s war.” Strange, I thought AU was supposed to be a student’s home away from home. I guess it doesn’t occur to some people that they’re essentially destroying their own property.

Finally, you have to consider the cleaning staff. For every candy bar wrapper you drop on the floor, someone else will have to pick it up. Wouldn’t you agree the poor souls who have to deal with the communal bathrooms have it hard enough? I’ll refrain from mentioning any gory details, but cleaning bathrooms is not a glamorous job. To force the staff to take on more work, even if it’s to clean up an additional area from the antics of just one drunken night, is criminal.

My advice, the next time you have the urge to break a chair for the sake of outrageous hilarity, is to utilize your college education by considering the principle of cause and effect.