Community Standards

After my arrival on sunday, the orientation week started with a great adventure on monday afternoon. Three yellow school busses picked us up  (nearly 150 students) bringing us to Wal-Mart, where we bought stuff for our rooms: SHOPPING FEVER! The return was a complete mass or rather a tetris task. Each of us had bought a lot carrying his stuff in huge plastic bags or cases. The whole bus was full with shit and I stuck in my seat! But it was pretty funny...

Having survived the busodyssey, later on we met with 50 people of our group in front of someone's residence hanging out on the grass with some beers. The fun was over soon when the residence security person's asked all of us to go. The guys who arranged the meeting were lucky. They just got a warning. However, the crowd moved on seeking for a new place to stay because drinking is absolutely forbidden on the campus. I suggested to go my place with my pretty big living room. So I had  between 20 and 30 people in my appartment. But everything went well without damages, a mess and even no real trouble. I even not only managed to smooth the security women, but make them to like. Appreaciating my honestness and my promise to make sure things wouldn't get out of control, I had a really nice conversation of one hour with them and Steve and Szymon. The women felt entertained and enjoyed themselves. I also got to know the residence student assistant of my building, who sent me even greetings out of a car. I could remember a few names of the people I had, but they all remembered mine. This was a real social networking night for me and a big fun...

The next day we heard endless speeches from several offices and services about campus rules, correct behaviour and husky student creeds which reminded us all the rules we had broken in the last night. It is good to that so many people take care of the exchange students. However, I can't hear anymore the word "help". Indeed, all these offices help in a emergency case. Nevertheless help also ciphers a bulk of highly regulated obligations and restrictions. Citing the agent of the office for community who talked about the dangers of alcohol and drug use: "We want to help students. We are not the bad guys." The tone of a lot speekers were basically moralistic. I felt my conscience shaking, whenever the officer of the Connecticut police department with his emphatic voice said: "This is a crime!"
I am excited to see how students will respect the strict campus rules during the semester...