Now everyone must pay for someone else's vandalism.

Yahuh... now do one for police unions.

96

Aw come on now, we can't be holding our public servants to account for their actions now can we? You silly billy

39
- Oh sweetie... They're not servants of the PUBLIC...
  
  12
Police should have to carry professional insurance just like doctors carry malpractice insurance.

Change my mind.

29
- I don't think it will work at all. I think it would make the problem much worse, not better.
  
  Think about that for a second: Police are never convicted, and rarely officially sanctioned. They always get away with it. Insurance will never pay out, so the cost of insuring officers will be next to nothing.
  
  But, now we have an insurer with a vested interest in clearing the officer of wrongdoing, lest they be forced to pay a claim.
  
  13
- They'd have to work a week of overtime to afford the sky high cost.
  
  1

Love that most of the world's governments came together and said "collective punishment is bad, we should make it illegal during times of war" and shit like this can still fly within any first world country.

84

This sort of collective treatment seems awful "communist" for a system that claims to hate it so much.

Almost like they're okay with it when it means forcing their will and their hardship onto a group that is powerless to resist...

7

Or they could just find the vandal with the security cameras they no doubt installed in every single hallway to protect themselves against their own customers should they have to go to court 🤷

Oh wait, I forgot, we're trapped in tyranny.

58

I've been to several schools with zero cameras in residential buildings. I do not think they are as common as you think.

10
- Hell, my school basically only had cameras in a few very specific areas inside any of the buildings on campus. The only ones I was aware of in our departmental building were, understandably, keeping an eye on the doorway into the explosives labs.
  
  2
But that would require actual work and investigation! Why would they bother when they can just add on another $100 to everybody's rent bill for "repairs"

5

Pretty sure we all saw the dean drawing dicks everywhere.

52

Un-dean-iable

15
Lies! It was the least popular professor. I heard this is actually just the new season of Survivor: Academia.

3

The HRE ain't gonna do shit since it hasn't existed since 1806.

40

Voltaire would argue that even then it didn't

12
- 😆 And he'd be right for all intents and purposes!
  
  3

How do you think it works in condo buildings and residential co-ops?

39

They generally try to find a responsible party and bill them, file an insurance claim, use the general maintenance budget, and special assessments as a last resort.

64
- This. They should be going through insurance for this.
  
  Of course, the insurance rates would rise, and they'd still be passing on that increase to the residents, but residents would be slightly less bitchy about it since the extra layers of opacity would make it seem like "just more of the usual greed and inflation."
  
  31
Or in the wider world with public infrastructure and taxpayers

26
- That's... how public infrastructure works?
  
  You try to find the responsible party. If yes, they have to pay for repairs/damages.
  If not, the tax money has to pay for it, as the infrastructure is needed.
  
  23

How do they know it is done by someone within that community and not some random person?

39

If it was then someone who lives there may have been able to see it and can say that.

1
- Then charge the one person lol
  
  5

This happened to me in college. The dorms were “locked” over the holidays and student residents were not allowed to even access the dorm building, when we returned back to school after new year’s, the hallway and apartment doors had been vandalized. The university passed the bill on to each of the residents of the building, even without any way we could have stopped it, since campus police would’ve arrested anyone found attempting to get into our dorms.

35

Happened to me, too. Some unknown people caused damage to a common room and they billed everyone in the building. I tried to email about it, but they didn't budge. I felt I had to pay it because the university threatens to withhold transcripts and stuff if you have outstanding fines.

11
- Exactly what they did to me. I fought them on it. It was basically a shakedown racket and to get my diploma I decided it was better to pay and hold a grudge and have it written on my tombstone for posterity.
  
  10
This definitely happened. Definitely not made up.

-39
- Username checks out
  
  6

This seems...unlawful...

Edit - for anyone who actually knows stuff about things, is it?

32

A lot can be legal if you agree to it. But they absolutely can't unilaterally declare this rule into effect.

Just don't pay, what are they gonna do? Sue you for damages that they admit themselves can't prove?

20
- In a general sense, you are completely right, but this seems to be a college. By being a student, you've agreed to ALL the terms they hand you. If you decline, then you aren't a student anymore. Even if you pay EVERYTHING you owe except the unfair vandalism fee, you're not getting a diploma.
  
  15

My solution would be this:

Have a running total for damages caused by vandals and call it a “Vandalism Lottery”. When someone is caught vandalizing in the community, they win the lottery, but instead of getting money, they pay whatever that lottery amount is up to. $700,000? To bad! Work the rest of your life to pay it off.

And to keep it fair, the starting amount should be no less than $20,000.

On top of that, they should be required to clean up any identified vandalism for at least the next year.

It should NEVER be at the loss of residents, students, or taxpayers to recoup damage caused by idiots.

And yes, I'm salty because vandals caused over $50,000 to a brand-new waterfront park we had open this past year, and the Vandalism Lottery would have been a wonderful prize to the jackasses who got caught!

16

Even this I disagree with. It sounds like a good idea until the total cost is substantial, and they don’t want to foot the bill. So they watch for someone who does anything that can be misconstrued as vandalism and force them to foot the bill.

Not to mention, fining someone for $100 in damage nearly a million is honestly more unethical than the vandalism.

There’s a reason we don’t do this type of thing in the legal world, it’s easily taken advantage of, and unethical as fuck.

26
- So they watch for someone who does anything that can be misconstrued as vandalism
  
  Vandalism serious enough to be brought to court would be enough to win the lottery. If it's something petty, like doodling on a park bench with a pencil, then they don't win, but they should still do XX months of community cleanup.
  
  As an alternative to the lottery, how about we charge the scumbags 2x the actual cost to repair the damage they caused. And 1 year community cleanup as a sign of goodwill.
  
  Either way, the cost to society far outweighs the current cost of committing these crimes. Flip it around and see what happens.
  
  2

Approximately 30 days before students are charged, a notice will be sent to community members in an effort to identify the responsible individual(s) for additional investigation.

Ah, so if you don't rat out the vandals, you have to pay

14

Weird that you wouldn't snitch on the dude who smears poop on the walls.

I'd like to think everyone would give you a pass for that.

16
- Yeah I have a feeling this is more about paint on walls and that kind of thing. The phantom shitter has no friends.
  
  13
That assumes you know who did lol

6

Mask out the vandalised area and put up a posting "free space available for graffiti art, email your sketch to blabla to get it approved "

11

The problem with this is it takes a while to normalize and self regulate. It demonstrably works, but it takes a long time for the dickheads and edgelords to stop making poorly drawn swastikas every day. Longer than any institution is willing to commit to anything.

5

What a great way to ensure you'll never get donations from some specific alumni

8

What is HRE?

6

I drew the dicks!

5

Penisman?

1

I really like this. You can't imagine how horrible every bathroom in my university was and as soon as one is fixed and repaired it get destroyed, and i mean destroyed as in stall doors being broken and sometimes partially or completely ripped , toilets getting beyond clogged and shit smeared everywhere, faucets broken,etc.

5

But would this policy actually prevent that? A vandal in a community of 100 people would only be charged 1% of the repair fees (assuming they aren't caught), seems like a meaningless disincentive for them.

And forcing community members to self-police or be charged fees is asking for trouble.

30
- Someone ought know who did it. Anonymous tips could work. I don't consider it snitching because the bastard(s) is making it worse for everyone just for some thrill or a dumb dare. Honestly, Fuck them.
  
  -4
This is when you set hidden cameras in the hallways and have maintenance check hourly. The second something happens it goes to security footage. Who was in there?

It seriously only takes a couple people to do stuff like that and keep stuff wrecked for everyone.

5
- They only installed cameras like last year but yeah it's the best solution. I think that if they give some jail time to the first POS they caught then it'd scare everyone enough to stop it from ever happening again.
  
  3
You think you should have had to pay for repairs?

3
- The problem is the "not my problem" mentality. This is a way to mitigate it.
  
  2

Just send them all the bills you have because "this acacemic year, you are implementing a You Pay For Me Policy".

4

In fact, you could right away send them bills for every incident you don’t exactly know that they didn't cause it…

4

This is a violation of the Geneva Convention, article 3.

2