By Craig Anderson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 23, 1998

If you break it, you buy it

As the spring semester draws to a close, the UA Department of Residence Life is tallying hall property damage and passing the bills on to residents - even those who didn't break anything.

Residence Life Director James Van Arsdel said a long-standing rule requires all residents to bear the cost of repairs due to theft, vandalism or carelessness if the actual culprits cannot be determined.

"Our policy for many years has been if we can't bill an individual, we determine whether it's a wing, floor or hall's responsibility and we charge the wing, floor or hall," he said.

Van Arsdel said Residence Life also adds a 15 percent surcharge to the actual cost of repair or clean-up "to ensure students are not careless about causing damage."

While some residents agreed the policy is fair, others said it has forced them to pay out of pocket for doing nothing wrong.

"I think it sucks," said Corleone Hall resident Dan Dillon. "A couple of residents in our dorm would go around breaking everything, and because nobody saw them we all had to pay."

Dillon, an optical engineering junior, said the cost last semester, when divided between all residents, did not amount to more than $10 per person.

"It wasn't that much, but if it was 10 bucks, that was 10 bucks I could have spent on something else," he said.

In March, University of Michigan students protested when a residence hall charged an entire floor for a stolen $1,500 bulletin board.

The students, aided by Ann Arbor, Mich., attorney David Cahill, said the policy is illegal because it violates the Michigan Landlord-Tenant Relationships Act.

Van Arsdel said while Arizona has a similar law to protect tenants from unfair treatment, it does not apply to the University of Arizona.

"The Landlord-Tenant Act in Arizona clearly excludes the state (institutions)," he said.

Still, Coronado resident Riley Sullivan said students should protest if they disagree with the policy.

"We pay a lot of money to live here in a room the size of a box," said Sullivan, a political science freshman. "They have a right to complain."

Charlotte Oliver, Residence Life customer services manager, said that in the fall, Manzanita-Mohave Hall residents paid the most, sharing a hall-wide damage charge of $8,264 - about $26 per student. Some residents paid additional charges for damage to their particular wing or floor.

More than half that amount - about $4,760 - was charged to repair a Manzanita-Mohave sprinkler head vandalized in October.

The total cost of damage for the current semester has yet to be determined, but Oliver said students usually do more damage in the spring than in the fall.

For Van Arsdel, the policy is more a question of necessity than fairness.

"One way or another, we've got to pay for this stuff," he said.

A sample of unusual damage claims for various residence halls during fall 1997:

• "Condom has been splattered on the corridor outside room 185"- $34.40
• "Remove pumpkins and related mess from pool area" - $29.70
• "Custodian clean up pizza cooked/baked inside of large toaster" - $26.40
• "Writing on the door about Dave, one of the students that lives there" - $12.50
• "Cleaned human waste from shower floor and disinfected" - $34.40
• "Vomit in the guest bathroom; this happens every single day" - $14.60
• "Toilets and urinals flooding due to someone flushing a tampon" - $145.70
• "ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) sign missing in elevator area" - $42.50 (charged four times for the same sign)
• "Clean up blood in lobby area and guest bathroom" - $42.61
• "'Jon was here' was written on the wall above the railing" - $14.60

Source: Residence Life hall damage reports

Total Hall-Wide Damage Charges for Fall 1997:

(excluding wing- and floor-specific damages)

            Hall was charged:  Each resident paid:

Apache-Santa Cruz:	$285.95	  $0.95
Arizona-Sonora:	        $980.35	  $2.82
Babcock:		$121.81	  $0.77
Cochise:		$270.76	  $1.71
Coconino:	        $0	  $0
Corleone:		$534.61	  $4.20
Coronado:	        $6,935.50 $10.31
Gila:		        $0	  $0
Graham-Greenlee:	$1,347.60 $4.75
Hopi:		        $123.70	  $1.20
Kaibab-Huachuca:	$177.38	  $0.61
La Paz:		        $2,861.75 $7.01
Maricopa:		$22.60	  $0.24
Manzanita-Mohave:	$8,264.20 $25.92
Navajo-Pinal*:	        $172.05	  $1.31
Sierra*:		$55.81	  $1.73
Yavapai:		$623.61	  $3.48
Yuma:		        $50.55	  $0.40

*Navajo-Pinal and Sierra are halls within Arizona Stadium.

Source: UA Department of Residence Life