I am fairly sure anybody who has been inside one of the Ghetto houses built before 1960 would agree. In my house alone, there are sloppy paint jobs, poorly done repair jobs and retrofitted fixtures that seem to be out of place.

Before I go any further, let me be perfectly clear that this is not an assault on the facilities management folks here at UD. No buts, they do a great job. The workload is overwhelming and they do a fantastic job considering the number of facilities in the Ghetto and Darkside neighborhoods.

Furthermore, consider the extensive damage done to these properties over the course of a school year. Sure, your house might be kept in fairly good repair. However, I promise you, for every house that is well kept, there is another that is destroyed.

Facilities Management and Residential Services do an amazing job maintaining residential facilities year to year. If you don't agree with me, spend a summer working in one of these departments and see it first hand. You'll quickly become a believer.

Back to the point. As I sit in my living room, I see opportunities for improvement in my house. The best example is in the bathroom. I can name numerous improvements like replacing the linoleum or repainting the walls which would improve the look and feel of that room significantly. Unfortunately, the laws of time, labor and economics don't allow for these sorts of improvements in every house.

I propose the university allow students to make minor repairs and improvements to houses they are living in.

This may sound irresponsible, but I think with proper training and supervision, students could be trusted to make these small improvements in exchange for a discount on housing. Minor improvements wouldn't require a building permit, and safety training and equipment would be mandatory.

Of course, all materials and procedures would be approved by a supervisor, likely someone with contracting in his or her background hired specifically to oversee house beautification projects. Students would be doing the work, and UD would still be able to control what work was being done and what was being added or subtracted.

The bottom line is once a program like this is set into motion, the university cannot lose. If students do a lousy job, they get fined for damaging their property in the amount it takes to clean up the mess. If students take their house and make dramatic improvements, they get some amount of money dropped from their housing bill for those semesters.

I would enjoy sanding down the walls of my bathroom, filling in the nicks and scrapes, pulling the fake plastic tile down and putting a nice color of paint on the walls. I think it would be a fun and constructive project.

Unfortunately, I signed a contract that said I would not do any of these things. Too bad for me and too bad for the university as a whole.