_Kennedy Horton is a sophomore at MU studying English. She is an opinion columnist who writes about student life, social justice and being an introvert for The Maneater. _

Sitting in somebody’s unassigned assigned seat has to be one of those offenses up there with kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies. I assume everyone is familiar with this term, but for those who are not, an unassigned assigned seat is a college student’s specific seat in a class for a semester.

It’s unassigned on a technicality. Since we’re adults and in college, no one is going to give you a specific seat, but the seats are assigned in every other sense. That is, if I sit there every day and my classmates see me sit there every day, then for all intents and purposes, it is my seat with no room for sharing.

Recently, I got to one of my English classes a little later than usual (but still on time). I walked in and a girl was in my unassigned assigned seat. I didn’t know what to do. The way I saw it, I had only three options. I could leave the class, suck it up and just sit somewhere else, or throw her and the desk out of the window. My heart ached for latter, but I stayed. It was the angriest 75 minutes of my life.

I just could not wrap my head around it in the same way I can’t understand serial killers and dog kickers, except that there must be something psychologically wrong with them. I don’t even think people who steal seats have this excuse — they’re just malicious. Malicious and meticulous, because although it seems like it happens out of the blue, no one ever randomly sits in a seat that isn’t theirs. They’ve been plotting to do so, waiting for the chance to usurp your self-appointed temporary throne.

Determining one’s seat happens in the first two days of class. The rules of a classroom versus a lecture hell are a bit different, because after a certain row in a lecture, it doesn’t matter; it’s just all counted as “the back.” Nevertheless, there are still rules. After two days of class, you should be locked in and solidified. You’re essentially sworn into that seat until the end of time, or at least the semester. Therefore, it’s a crime to sit anywhere else. It’s simply the principle of the thing. To take a seat that doesn’t belong to you is to throw the entire class into anarchy.

My strategy for recovering from this is to get to class ridiculously early. I’ll get there about 30 minutes early, sit right next to the door, and silently dare anybody, especially said chair thief, to go in before me. It’s a bit of an extreme precaution, but it’s a necessary one.

Should this happen to you and you are more of a person who would like to throw a chair thief out the window, that’s understandable as well. I’ll look the other way, I promise.