The stereotyping of Northeastern students: I’m just as sick of it as you are. From sports riots to Mission Hill, NU has gotten a lot of bad press lately. Much of the local media seems to see NU as the perfect scapegoat for all that is wrong with Boston’s youth. Unsurpris-ingly, a lot of NU students I talk to seem to have a knee-jerk response to the situation. Most claim the accusations are unfounded and biased. With another baseball season over and Northeastern emerging relatively blame-free from any wrongdoing, these feelings seem to be gaining support.

Maybe the media is on to something though. It’s true the majority of students here are not beer-guzzling morons, but that element is certainly a large part of our student body. Northeastern can sometimes feel like a breeding ground for that type of behavior. I know I’ve seen my fair share of it, especially during my freshman year.

The thing about living in a freshman residence hall that really got to me was the 20 other guys I lived with. It’s true I only shared a room with two, but I can assure you I lived with 20, because that’s how many were in my hall freshman year. That was the number of guys I dealt with daily, the number of guys I faced every Tuesday night when it was “Beer Ball Night.”

Take for example the community bathroom we all shared. It wasn’t that these guys were especially lazy and sloppy; I mean they were, but that wasn’t the problem. The issue was they made it a point to destroy the bathroom every single day. They would take the trashcans and empty them all over the floor, then they would remove the paper towels and roll them down the hall. Sometimes they covered all the mirrors with shaving cream. I know all college kids can be a little unruly from time to time, but this kind of stuff happened almost every day. Once someone even decided to relieve himself in a bowl and put it next to the toilet. There is no greater feeling than walking into the bathroom one morning to find human feces in a bowl on the floor, let me tell you.

These guys’ destructive tendencies weren’t just limited to the bathroom though. One night, around 4 a.m., someone decided he didn’t like the hallway’s Styrofoam ceiling tiles anymore, or something. I was woken up by quite a bit of noise from outside my door. I decided I would peer out and see what all the hubbub was about. I discovered the group at the end of the hall. They were taking turns jumping up and punching the tiles. The hallway was littered with broken Styrofoam and dust. This looked like a pretty moronic scene, but I thought I better ask one of the young men, just to be sure.

“Hey, what’s up?” I shouted to one of them.

“Hey man, what’s going on?” someone responded.

“Oh, not too much. Say, I was wondering, what are you guys doing?”

“Punching holes in the ceiling.”

“Oh, that’s what I thought.”

“Yeah man, it’s awesome.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

With that I turned around and closed my door. Yet again I was amazed at their quest for stupidity. This kind of behavior lasted all year long.

If anything, it only got worse as the year progressed. Things actually got so bad that in March, the Resident Assistant for the floor quit.

When I tell my friends at other colleges these stories they are always impressed. Every school has its less mature set, but from the reactions I get from my friends it is clear Northeastern students are taking destructive tendencies to a whole new level.

All of this happened when the boys were confined to just one residence hall floor. The idea of them having a whole neighborhood (Read: Mission Hill) to run amuck in just scares me, but it’s now the case. To be honest I’m not surprised to hear complaints from other residents on the hill. I only had to deal with one group of these guys. Mission Hill is home to hundreds. Not all of the students are NU students, but many are.

Once again I realize this represents only a fraction of students at Northeastern, but this segment is getting attention, and with good reason. NU is getting a bad rap. But after my experiences freshman year, I can’t say it’s undeserved, or surprising. What is the solution?

I don’t know, but cleaner bathrooms couldn’t hurt.

– Carleton Atwater is a middler journalism major and a member of The News staff.