If USC can get Cirque du Soleil, why can’t we fix the WiFi?

You’d think at a top 25 institution of higher education, the WiFi would work, the printers would print, the elevators would elevate…

I am staring blankly into the gleaming hue of a computer monitor abyss, grappling with the fact the Pardee Tower printer is inexplicably “down” and, all at once, I am reminded that life is brutish and short and, no matter how hard we try, we will never be good enough.

It is 7 a.m. on a Friday: too goddamn early for this.

‘Life is brutish and short’ face

When I pay as much as I do for tuition to the University of Southern California, I expect to be able to print my IR 210 paper. What makes the constant Battle of the Ink Cartridge all the more demoralizing is that our school obviously has its shit together. We bred the man behind the “Star Wars” franchise.

We send a disgusting amount of athletes to the summer Olympics every four years. For God’s sake, we had Cirque du Soleil do one of their weird, conceived-by-an-acrobat-on-LSD shows on McCarthy Quad a few months ago just because we could.

And yet, after I walk away from the printer that won’t work, I get in an elevator to go back up to my floor and beg a friend to let me borrow theirs. The elevator lurches. For a solid four minutes, I am stuck. Such an occurrence is commonplace in the dorm.

Freshman psychology major Hannah Freeman: “One night after a fire drill in the rain, a bunch of other people and I were stuck in the elevator for ten minutes. So that was fun.”

“But, Morgan!”  you say. “Why don’t you go to Leavey to print, if you loathe the Pardee printer so? Why don’t you take the stairs, if you loathe the elevator so?”

I ask for so little in this world. Can I not have this one mercy?

First of all, how dare you. Second of all, using the word “loathe” makes me automatically assume you are a douchebag. And finally: I don’t want to pay however many cents per page to be further infuriated by yet another printer that won’t work, and I don’t want to take the stairs.

My cardiovascular strength is not what it was in my prime (3rd grade) and I resent you for reminding me.

This is all beside the point. I shouldn’t have to take the stairs. I am paying that elevator 50,000 dollars and so, by God, it should be able to elevate me. I hardly ever see maintenance workers scuttling around my building, and that’d be okay if they were like Fixer-Fairies that worked their magic under the cover of night.

But last month, the fourth floor toilets were all nearly overflowing in human waste and it remained that way for days.

No, that’s fine. My Blackboard post due at midnight can definitely wait

I tried bribing them. I left milk and cookies outside my door, hoping the SoCal Santas would have mercy on us humble college pupils and give us functioning places to pee. And every morning, the milk and cookies were gone. The waste in the toilet remained.

But, I digress. I’ll just watch my favorite brand of YouTube video – children falling off shit/being knocked over by giant exercise balls – to make me feel better.

OH WAIT. USC Secure Wireless isn’t working in my room (which, by the way, is hot as balls as a result of a lack of air conditioning #vicioussweating) and USC Guest Wireless is sketchier than the dad in Precious Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire.

I wonder if the clown from Cirque du Soleil had to deal with this bullshit.

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