Students living in Rodin College House are getting in the habit of setting their alarm clocks 15 minutes earlier. With two of the building’s four elevators out of service, Rodin’s 800+ residents are paying for Halloween revelry that got out of hand.

Notices in the lobby posted by House Dean Ken Grcich read:

Two elevators are out of order due to vandalism. All of the light fixtures in both elevators were smashed.

Vandalized elevator in Rodin (Antoniette Costa)

Oddly enough, the incident was not reported as an act of vandalism.

The incident was classified as “damaged property” in the police report according to Karima Zedan, Division of Public Safety spokesperson. Rodin security guards were informed about the occurrence by second hand sources. There was no police investigation because of the way the damage was documented.

Not reporting this vandalism sets a bad precedent for future acts of recklessness on campus. In the meantime, regardless of what happened, it’s been a few too many times up and down twenty floors in overcrowded elevators. How long does it take to repair broken lights?

Late Saturday night, my housemate and I were retelling crazy Halloween weekend stories at our kitchen table when we were greeted by a new friend–a mouse. We screamed like little girls and stood on top of our chairs as he scurried out from beneath our fridge to underneath the oven. Perhaps we could have never met our new friend had our landlord allowed us to keep our cat, which lived with us for the first two months of school.

Even though our rental contract explicitly stated that pets were not allowed, when a friend gave me a kitten for my birthday, I graciously accepted for the mere fact that I had seen several mice in our house this summer. Even though I’m not really a cat person–and I am definitely not a mouse person–my housemates and I warmly welcomed the new addition. After several visits from the landlord’s maintenance crew, word got out that we had a kitten living in our house, and unfortunately our kitten, Omelette, had to go.

Did we really have to get rid of Omlette the cat? (Caroline Pearsall)

Apparently, the landlord would rather have mice invade our house than have an innocent kitten roaming around.

I don’t know if other landlords allow animals, but on my block I’ve certainly seen several. Little Bo Peep, the Shih Tzu puppy, lives two doors down from me. I frequently see a little black kitten sleeping in the window across the street. Either tenants are secretly housing animals without consent from their landlords, or it’s just my landlordwho doesn’t like animals.

It’s important for students to have companionship that animals provide, especially those who live by themselves. Understandably dormitories can’t allow certain kinds of pets, but maybe off campus landlords and campus officials should reconsider their reasoning for banning animals. There is evidence that pets are stress relieving and morale boosters, two things that every student on this campus could use. And, from my own experiences, animals, specifically cats, keep the disgusting Philadelphia mice at bay. These ugly and dirty rodents are everywhere, both in on and off campus residences. Surely, one little kitten can’t be worse than a house full of disgusting varmints.