Now, I don’t usually do this, as I usually try to respect everyone’s opinion (who am I kidding?), but the counterpoint article to my RA letter was so hilarious that only someone like me could make the tirade more enjoyable. First of all, to whomever wrote this counterpoint thing: learn what a counterpoint is. You are supposed to look at my arguments and rebut them, not prattle off a litany of your complaints to residents. You might as well have titled your article: “Why I Hate Every Resident I’ve Ever Had Because They’re All Meanie Heads Who Try To Have Fun Too Much!”
 

Before I continue, I’d like to point out that while I don’t know for certain who wrote this article, I’m quite certain I know who it is by style alone, and I’ll consider myself gracious enough for keeping his/her anonymity. Speaking of style, I’d like to note that all those CAPITAL LETTERS YOU USE LOOK LIKE YOU’RE YELLING AT ME, and that makes it so that no one’s gonna want to listen to you, just like if you were my mom screaming at me. At the very least, it doesn’t make you sound like a third year college student. All you’ve done is somehow make my article look better, so I should really just keep my mouth shut and accept my victory. But that wouldn’t be fun now would it? Let’s begin - I’ll actually do counterpoints, unlike certain ‘writers’.

“I’ve read your letter and you do make some valid points.” – duh.

“RAs DO NOT make-up the rules, BUT we are expected to enforce them. Constantly complaining to us about how stupid the rules are is useless.” - When I - saw this line, I saw Captain Spock, READING, this line, BECAUSE, of; all the awkward… PAUSES, and screams. I think any genius could have figured out that the RAs do not hold secret meetings to make up random rules for living in the dorms, and in fact, this genius knew quite well. I also know that you are expected to enforce the rules; however, if you had a choice of enforcing the rules to a point where you piss off your residents or not enforcing rules you wouldn’t get in trouble for not enforcing anyway, which would you choose? 

I, for one, and many other RAs, would certainly go with the latter. Your paranoia of losing your RA job by not enforcing rules to the bone is completely unjustified. Even if you get found of not enforcing a rule you didn’t make up, would they really just get rid of you like that? If my RHD walks into my room for some reason and sees the cable wire taped to the floor instead of the ceiling, would she have a fit and fire all the RAs that did our room and safety? Heck no – who do you think is going to replace an RA all of a sudden in the middle of a semester anyway? Your job is safe, get a life. Furthermore, I don’t remember constantly complaining about these rules. I think I complained all of twice in my article about the rules. 

It seems like all you did was take this opportunity to complain about your RA experience, or basically others. If I were to go out on a limb, my guess would be that you think people complain about the rules all the time because your residents probably give you flak. Flak about how you’re enforcing pointless rules.  So they’re complaining about them. And you’re tired of hearing these complaints, so you’re lashing out at me or some other well informed reader, we who probably almost never complain about our living situations. 

You know what really bugs me about these rules you RAs have? You’re just like cops. You enforce these rules but feel as if these rules do not apply to you – and why should they? Just like a cop writes you a speeding ticket and drives off at 75 mph (probably faster than you were driving for your ticket), you search our rooms for illegal goods while probably in possession of copious amount of liquor and unsavory appliances like microwaves. Look at your room. Yeah - YOU. I’m guessing there’s a very strong probability that you have alcohol in your room. Are you even 21 yet? Did you know you can only have a 6 pack of beer or a liter of spirits and not both? Bet you did. Do you even think about it? Why should you, what is some RA going to bust you? Hahaha, I’m so astute.
 

“If you really want change then YOU, the resident, must actually take the initiative and speak to Campus Res.” – Hey Campus Res, I think I should be allowed to hold as much liquor in my room as I want. Oh, and I want everyone under 21 that comes to my parties to be allowed to drink with me. And I think I should be allowed to throw parties that get loud from time to time. Yeah, this is going to go over really well.

“We have an RA Council that is currently working to address RA concerns with some of the problems.” – read: “we have RAs who sit around eating donuts in the college lounge talking about boy problems.”
 

“I do not speak for all RAs because WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME.” – Funny, when I look at a crowd of RAs, I tend to think they’re all the same. It’s probably cause they’re all Asian. I keed.
 

“A common complaint is that RAs just do what they want and that we pull rules from our asses... you'll find find that some new RAs tend to be a little too over the top in enforcing the rules but that may be because they are eager to do their jobs correctly. They need time to get comfortable with their positions and get a feel for what it makes sense to do, so cut them some slack.” – I’ve given plenty of slack. That’s why I wrote my article - not out of spite or hatred, but with resolve, believing that some RAs will sit back, read, and think about their actions a little.  Read my last words: “We don’t want to hate you, we really don’t. So stop making life hard for us. That is all I candidly ask from you.” Actually, read my entire article before trying to counterpoint it, whatever you think counterpointing is. Again, you don’t pull rules out of your asses, it’s just all the pointless rules you force upon us don’t apply to you RAs. That’s our beef.

“As for the loud parties, YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING!!!” - I NEVER COMPLAINED ABOUT IT!!!

“…I WILL NOT KNOW ABOUT IT BECAUSE NO ONE SAID ANYTHING.” – tautologies are funny enough by themselves

“A lot of residents think that we just know stuff automatically and then complain later that we never did anything, but these residents probably never said anything about it to us while it was going on.” – These residents are high. See following conversation:

“Dude, did you get the brownies?  I’m totally hungry man, why the hell didn’t you get the brownies?!”
 

“Dude, you totally never told me to get brownies!”

“Oh!  Mah bad.  You really should have known though”

“If you don’t want to start drama, you can always be anonymous. It’s not like the RA is going to say, ‘Okay man you gotta turn down the music because the dude next door is complaining.’ But don’t take this as justification for going to your RA to complain about everything. Most likely if you ask politely, the offending resident will stop.” – Where the hell is this article going?  Weren’t you supposed to be critiquing my letter or something?

“If you were stupid enough to blatantly advertise with an exposed 30-pack that there would be a party, you were asking for it.” – If that girl were stupid enough to blatantly advertise with her exposed panties in that short skirt and high heel boots that there would be a party in her panties (everybody’s coming), she was asking for it.

“Even though your birthday party may have been quiet... the maximum number of guests allowed in a suite is 12, 2 per resident. I would have told you guys to keep quiet and stop people from constantly going in and out because of slamming doors.” – of course I’m only going to invite only my 12 best friends to a nice quiet gathering on my birthday. Maybe we should have done a poetry reading and gone over some Shakespearian sonnets and discuss how much we like his iambic pentameter. Then we could have sipped on some tea and crumpets and discuss the state of affairs of our balls, or lack thereof.
 

“And it’s not like RAs just roam the halls looking for people to pick on, we honestly have much better things to do.” – like write this article?

“One more thing: Health and Safety Inspections. You have anywhere from 1 day to 1 week to get rid of illegal stuff. If you don’t bother to read the signs posted all over then you deserve to get written up.” – explain to me why we need these again? Oh yeah... to hide all of the illegal stuff we’ve been collecting. Yeah, this makes sense to me.

“Lastly, personal microwaves are not allowed.” – This is a very interesting way to start a conclusion.  Way to tie together all your main points.  Oh, and I never talked about microwaves, but I guess we could start. 

“If you have an issue, bring it up with Campus Res and stop complaining about the power outages at 3AM.” – there were power outages? Who are these residents complaining about power outages? Let me join them. I want to complain about things that never happened either. Excuse me, I’m gonna go complain about the moon landing.

“I always get triples complaining about fixing room power outages at 1 AM.” – ohh, it’s just YOUR problem. I see. It’s probably the moon’s fault.

“Please tell your love-to-bitch-at-the-RA friends to do their hair in the bathroom and not to stick ten million appliances to power strips upon power strips plugged into the wall because that causes power outages.” – Let me go tell all my guy friends to go curl and blow dry their inch of hair in the bathroom. Ok done.  Problem solved.

“Thank you.” – you’re welcome. 

“A Concerned RA” -› A Conceited RA – fixed your typo
 

In conclusion, I hate the moon because it’s really big and spinning out of orbit and we never really landed on it. So if you’re going to try to bring a toaster into your room to have piping hot Pop Tarts in the morning, please don’t plug fifteen million different toasters into one power surge because it will cause power outages at 10am and then people might complain about the lack of light from the sun because the moon won’t freaking get out of my face. And please take note this is how to properly end a counterpoint article. Thank you.
 

Sincerely,

A Conceited James Han

James’ Note: This James Han asked to be anonymous because RAs would go onto his Facebook and flame him and totally make his Facebook wall awesome cause he does stuff that is technically against the rules. If what you are doing affects the moon, I will come down on you no questions asked. If not, as long as you never talk about the moon, you’re cool. That is what good RAs are trying to do too!

Editor's Note: The letter that this is referring to is at:
http://www.aaezine.org/articles/vol15/15N3ResponseCandidLettertoRAsbyRA.shtml