Freshmen come to campus every year looking forward to getting away from home and living on their own. And when they first move into their dormitories, the new students take their first few steps into adulthood.

What they don’t realize is that they’re actually walking into another realm of existence, a dimension full of whines and frowns. These freshmen have entered what’ll be referred to in this article as the infantile zone.

Some wretched souls who find themselves in this infantile zone, more commonly known as “the dorms,” immediately want to leave once they realize they have to spend an eternity, more popularly known as the six-years it takes to graduate, with another dead man walking who doesn’t look, talk, or dress like they do.

Other pieces of fresh meat find themselves being kicked out of their cramp little $6,000 per year corners of hell so that roommates’ buddies can move in and they can move out to whatever hole was just vacated. And if there’s any damage to the rooms when their leases expire, these pushovers have to pay the price.

But dormitory living isn’t a paradise for newbies who manage to hold on to their hard-as-a-rock bed spaces, not to mention the thin, but even harder carpeting and the generic lobby-like furniture in their living rooms.

There’s also the tram-inspired walks home after 3 p.m. and the Thursday through Saturday 9 p.m. curfew.

Living on campus becomes infantile when roommates start acting the way they did when they lived at home. These vermin continuously invite their friends to sleep over, leave dirty dishes in the sink and hairy bars of soap in the bathtub, eat their roommates’ groceries and leave their junk food in the refrigerator to decay.

Instead of accepting responsibility for their actions, they accuse roommates of stealing and of being slobs.

These infants make announcements in the living room when everyone else is there hanging out or watching television. “My new sneakers are missing from my bedroom” is more of an accusation than it is a statement. “Whoever ate my food needs to stop” or “Someone needs to do the dishes” are among the many unsigned messages posted on the refrigerator. And dirty looks are given when someone else’s friends come to visit.

While this may come off as another plea for help emanating from another dimension via a rip in space-time, it’s actually a survival guide for the wayward souls who may currently find themselves in the infantile zone. Though it may be too late for the fools who’ve gone mad trying to adjust to living in the sophomoric haven, their several failures have provided the psychological blueprint for current prisoners’ inevitable breakout.

One way for residents to keep vermin from multiplying in their dormitory rooms is to do absolutely nothing. After all, cleaning in the infantile zone means keeping everything spotless for roommates and their friends. But although this dimension operates much like the Bizarro World, there should be some upkeeping done, as having Chinese food leftovers, cappuccino cups and burger wrappers lying around can still attract rats.

To keep from being guilted by roommates into washing their dishes, invest in plastic plates, as they don’t have to be left in the sink. Just throw them away in a trash can after every meal, along with such worries. Even if they don’t wash their own dishes, the place should look like a post apocalyptic future by this point.

And if these mutants make accusations about their food being stolen, mess with their heads. Buy their favorite kind of microwave dinners and leave the boxes underneath their friends’ beds or eat these meals in front of them. But before putting them away in the freezer, post “No more pretentious notes on the fridge.”

Leaving ipods, textbooks, shoes, socks and leftovers in the living room can keep it vacant for quite a while. Watching the Star Wars trilogy as loud as it could possibly be heard can also provide a few hours of privacy. What works well is clipping toenails, emitting bodily gases and not using air fresheners after huge meals.

If these Morlocks who dwell in the dormitories make intelligible non-violent attempts to communicate their frustrations with these actions, just claim ignorance to whatever half-baked conspiracy theory they spit out.

Remember that a lot of money is being spent to live on campus to earn a college education, not to get along with a bunch of puerile slobs. Just pretend they’re not there. That’s how they see their roommates.

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