By Grace Desoe
Residents of Pitman Hall, a Ryerson University residence, started a GoFundMe to repair damage from their most recent party.
First-year Ryerson students David Krol, a new media student, and Mitchell Jansman, an environmental and urban sustainability student, said their fire extinguisher was used and a window and speaker were broken at their party on Jan. 19.
They said they only noticed the damage when the party was shut down by campus security at 1 a.m. and nobody has since come forward to take the blame.
“I think it’s just the drunkenness and testosterone together that result in things like this,” said Jansman.
“We’ve had a couple of personal things broken before, but it seems to get worse every party,” added Krol.
First-year Pitman resident Lauren Canam said she wasn’t at the party but said she saw security running to the fourth floor and later saw the GoFundMe and guessed things got out of hand.
“People sometimes take shits in the bathtub, spill drinks, leave a disgusting mess,” said Canam.
They only received $15 of the $300 they were hoping for
“Usually the person who owns the apartment can clean up the mess, but something as bad a breaking fire extinguishers or breaking windows…That’s a lot for a broke university student to handle.”
She said situations like this “kind of ruin it for everyone” because people won’t want to host parties anymore and end up paying a lot for the damage.
“We decided [to use GoFundMe], but we couldn’t solicit, like charge entry to the party,” said Krol.
Krol said they have since removed the GoFundMe link to stay in line with community guidelines and because it wasn’t very successful. They only received $15 of the $300 they were hoping for.
Manager of Housing & Residence Life, Brandon Smith, was unable to comment on any damages due to privacy standards.
Smith said crowdfunding would be considered soliciting in residence and a violation of the Residence Community Standards and Pitman residence contract. According to Residence Community Standards, quiet hours begin at 1 a.m. on Saturdays and hosts can only sign in a maximum of three guests at a time. Residents are also not permitted to gain profit from their place in residence, this includes gambling, subletting and crowdfunding.
“We’re not too frustrated by [what happened],” Jansman said. “We will definitely host another party because we have a rep now.”
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