The Exemption Process Is Naught But Honeyed Venom

As a graduating senior, I have made an effort to reflect on some of my most impactful moments throughout my time in this university, joyous and horrific alike. One that will forever leave the most bitter of tastes in my mouth is that of when I sought an exemption from the University’s edict that all undergraduate students ought to live in a dorm. 

Nearing the end of my freshman year, something had become apparent to me: dorm life was not and will never be for me. I hold no negative attitude toward those who love the chaotic environment, I understand that it is a unique aspect the University prides itself on and is grounds for the most fond memories for a handful. It merely — and there could be no simpler way to phrase this — was not a personally-fitting existence. On a daily basis, I would experience unprecedented discomforts and a perpetual state of apprehension; despite my best efforts across months, my misery coaxed its way into every situation, and a primordial dread had settled itself on the depths of my soul. Yet I was also cognizant this misery was not necessary. There was no need for me to live this way. Beloved friends of mine recommended that I apply to live off-campus, citing many instances where it had proven effective. Thus, I did. 

Though I am ultimately glad I pursued this opportunity, what I would discover in the process is beyond repugnant. 

I played my sad tunes, vulnerably exposing my restlessness through forms and meetings and documentation as the bureaucracy trailed along. I swallowed the calls from within informing me this was a humiliating procedure — I told myself it was normal. Why should they not get to pry and tear at the confines of my heart? To lie my naked self down and have them examine and measure and test and retest and inspect and taste. Certainly they held some proprietary reason for this, their dulcet whispers reinforced their good-meaning, so God-given, intentions. I had to meet their criteria, to portray myself as just sick enough to need this but not too sick such as to require further intervention: shape myself in their desired, pitiful image. Most assuredly, in their promises I ought to mind away the distinct flavor of poison engulfed in honey.

Everything changed in the final step of the process, yet another interview, where I was informed my exemption request was rejected. 

Following imparting his unilateral judgement, the University representative smiled at me. How sweetly he thought he did, but his smile never reached his eyes. It was an appeasing smile, a smile of repressed annoyance, of knowing better than the idiot before you. It was the smile of someone who rejoiced in grasping they would get their way no matter what, but had apathetically calculated that a little showmanship goes a long way to avoid further inconvenience.

He sang and praised with crazed eyes the University’s mission, in chants he regurgitated mottos and enveloped negations betwixt faux argumentation for diversity and inclusion. Before my stunned silence, he recited indemonstrable statistics and offered unacceptable crumbs supposedly standing in for negotiation. Of a million abstractions he spoke, not once did he speak of me. He had, without half a thought, determined my agonies — in their demanded ridicule and exposure — were not sufficient. He had decided I was not sad enough, not bad enough. Not worth the effort. The person forced to prostrate in submission for this man’s benevolence was, after following every stipulated command, receiving a lecture on what they actually meant to be doing all along, misguided that they were.

It was upon his closing declaration I realized this man was irredeemably insane. We simply lived in different worlds: irreconcilable perspectival variation. To him, I was a petulant child. To me, he was not describing salvation, but with cultish fervor attempted to drown me in rehearsed zealotry. Whatever his twisted objective was behind deceiving my faculties, all he inspired in me was nothing but profound disgust. 

Is this what one’s university experience should be? A fully grown adult, having made a decision by his own accord, has his will overwritten and his premeditated solution so callously and systematically discarded by an institution because of … what? Tradition? Habit? How did this entity ever possibly earn the authority — the gall — to claim it knows me better than myself? Whatever qualification was bestowed on that man to say my discomfort was not enough? Did he want me to dramatize it, ought I generate threats and ultimatums? Would that have checked off his criteria? And then he gets to wash his hands clean, closing off with kind formalities and false pretenses regarding my wellbeing?

I was awestruck by the shamelessness of it all.

I am entirely ignorant in many aspects, and my youth betrays my imperfections. I could never be so prideful as to assert I am certain of the future, let alone in the matters of others. This pride was not absent in that man. The machinery of enforced living circumstances was constructed under the presumption that they understood something you did not. The process of acquiring an exemption is not merely outdated and tribalistic, it is violently insulting of your intellect and constrictive of your adult autonomy: it must be abolished.

In the grand majority of cases, there is indeed no problem with some inoffensive dorm living. But why should those that do not fit the mold bend and contort to its form? Why prohibit, why cruelly inhibit one’s capacities, under such baseless authority? The problem does not emerge from an official recommendation nor a default judgment, but in the violation of everyone’s self-determination under delusional grounding. Further, to humiliate and denigrate those who attempt to exert their will to escape, engaging with a savior complex? How laughable. When you do not let anyone flee from the subjective comforts of your home, you pass from savior to jailor.

An institution, by definition, can never stake a claim on a man’s heart.