Last time I checked, there was no oil in Santa Cruz Hall, and Wilfred Brown, the executive director of Housing and Residential Services, was not a Republican legislator from Texas lobbied by the rich corporations, nor a Puritan claiming that your auras attacked him in the name of a witch hunt.

As a freshman, I, like the majority of the readers, lived in the residence halls. However, unlike most, I have spent my entire college life in university housing. I have called San Miguel, San Rafael, Manzanita Village and even the now infamous Santa Cruz home over the past five years. In addition, I join the small sliver of Nexus readers who has been a resident assistant.

However, it didn’t take me five drawn-out years, and the experience of being an RA, to learn what the majority of residents learn in their first quarter: Check your stupidity at the door.

The first incident I reported as an RA was an act of stupidity. The residents were in their room with the door propped wide open and a handle of Bacardi rum on the desk, a fifth of Malibu on the floor and a row of shot glasses lined up. Were they being noisy or rowdy? No. Did it suck to have to document the situation and pour out all the alcohol? Yes. Did the residents party in the hall after that? Probably. Did I ever have to write them up again? No! Why, you ask? Because they learned the basics about living in the halls, just like you learn to hold your cups down as you walk down DP.

The residence halls aren’t your personal playground for drugs, booze and urination. If you’ve kept doing the same shit from Fall Quarter up until now, why do you or your friends even have to question your eviction? This isn’t preschool, and residents shouldn’t need to be held by the hand and potty trained.

I’m sure there are some residents who have violated just as many rules in the other seven residence halls. But I’m equally sure that those residents have some sense of decency, or at least maintain an illusion of respect toward the authority in their halls, as well as for the maintenance staff and hall property. If they didn’t, they do now.

Commentary regarding the Santa Cruz evictions has thrown around the term “concrete evidence,” which suggests that the real upset comes from the fact that the residents thought they could get away with it. This isn’t high school, and mommy and daddy aren’t here to hold your hand, so quit your bellyaching and deal with the consequences.

But I suppose that boys who couldn’t hold their bladders and chose to urinate on the floors, finger-painted the walls with their feces and thought puking was the normal reaction to a night of drinking can’t be held to the same expectations as other residents.

Sheveeta Marie Shephard is a senior English major.