Story

Dan Oltersdorf Colorado State University -------------------

I was in my room and heard some people yelling outside. I went out and they started talking to me about how they got "set up" by an RA. One of the residents had a flask and was sitting in our lounge. When an RA came by on rounds, she noticed the flask and asked if it had alcohol in it. He said yes, and offered her a drink, at which point she had to explain that she was an RA. The residents later swore that she was drunk, when she was actually just trying to be friendly while making the contact!

Story

This occurred around the middle of the fall semester. I have to say this so you understand that most residents knew how to find their way around the dorms. Also our building is rather small, so it doesn't take long to figure out....anyway, I was on the 3rd floor and a resident of that floor is frantically wandering around , she stops me and says, "How do you get to first floor?" Me, wondering how on earth she could not understand this, simply stated "you go down the stairs"

Story

An Ra on staff with me was making her last round of the night when she heard a males voice coming from a resident's room. This was a problem because visiting hours were over. She knocked on the door and everything fell silent. No one came to the door so she went down the hall and got another RA to help. Both being first year RAs thought they may need the assistance of a more experienced person so they called a third RA (half of the staff). They thought about it and decided what to do. One RA went to the office and called the room while the other 2 stayed outside the residents door. The call was made and sure enough the young lady answered the phone. The RA identified herself and asked the girl if there were any guys in the room. The resident assured her that there weren't and agreed for the RA to check the room. Just as the phone was hung up the door opened and out came this guy and the resident. Of course the other 2 RAs were there waiting!

Name:

Katie Partington

School:

UCLA

Story

Okay so this is actually a bit quirky, but the funniest incident report I ever wrote involved people throwing cheese. I was on duty, and in another RA's room when a resident knocked on his door asking where to get some ice because a girl had been hit in the eye. When I asked what happened, I was told that two guys had been throwing small cheeses (those red ones) in the hall and had pelted a girl in the eye with a misthrow and then taken off. We have a strict policy against throwing things in the hallways so I had to document the situation, even though I was unable to locate the "alleged cheese throwers". In the report, I had witnesses commenting on how far the cheese was being thrown and the speed of the cheese upon impact with the girl's eye. I almost died laughing when I read my report. It was like a Wisconsin police scene.

Story

During Fall Check-In a freshman resident walked up to me at the desk and asked me for his room number even though he had been living there for about three days. I looked up his information and told him that he lived in 321. He then proceeded to ask me if that room was on the 2nd Floor. Surprised, I looked at him and simply told him to try the 3rd Floor.

Story

One night Fall semester my duty partner fell asleep and forgot to meet up with me for rounds. I ended up checking the floors myself, which includes checking the fire door/stairwell. There are 2 stairwells, one on each side of every floor. One side is used by students to go from one floor to the next, and the other is only a fire exit --it's locked. So we check these doors to make sure they're locked. I was checking the door on one floor and a girl was sitting out in the hall. She gave me a really strange look because I don't think she knew I was an RA and thought I was trying to use the stairs. It was an awkward moment. I was laughing as I walked away.

School:

A college in Virginia

Story

OOPS! Well, I'm a new RA and have been trying to get to know my residents. To do this, I've been trying to get a lot of face time with them. I was going door to door to say "HI!" and to tell the residents about an upcoming program. I knocked on the FIRST door and heard, "Come in. No! Wait! Who is it?" I paused and said my name. Then I heard, "Um....Just a minute!" About two minutes later they came to the door and would only open it part of the way. We chatted for a minutes and they gave me some excuse about not being dressed, etc... I finished up with them and moved to the next door down. The two girls I had just spoke to went into their suitemates room. Mind you, the door was WIDE open and I was only about 10 feet away from it. And I hear, "Oh my god! You guys won't believe what just happened. We were sitting there studying and the RA came to the door. We only had like 6 or 7 candles burning!" (which is a violation at our school). She went on to say, "Yeah. And I spilled one of them all over me as we tried to hide it. I went to the door and I had candle wax all over my shoes, hands, and sleeves! I couldn't believe it!" Well, I couldn't believe it either! Hadn't they ever heard of SHUTTING THE DOOR?! I walked back around the corner and said, "Hi ladies!" I thought one of them was going to pass out!

Name:

Kristen Glin

School:

Northern Illinois University

Story

This incident happened when I was a new RA. I had been hired in the middle of the semester on a floor of Engineering students. One night I woke up to shouts in the hallway at 3 am. I opened my door to see a stream of water running past my door. I looked to my left and saw water gushing out of the bathroom which was five doors down!!! There was water gushing everywhere like a fire hydrant! I began trying to wake up residents to warn them that their rooms were flooded. The rooms across from the bathroom had an inch or two of water in them already! Anyway we finally got the water stopped. WE found out later that one of the residents had gotten drunk and tried to take the sink off the wall to put it in his friend's room! It did 7000.00 worth of damage!

Name:

Kevin

School:

Rhode Island College

Story

I was doing rounds one night when I heard screams of help coming from the elevator. Alarmed, I pressed the button and the door opened. Apparently, this freshman was new to the elevator concept: She was trying to get to the 3rd floor, but the elevator was on the 3rd floor, so the door wouldn't open...she thought she was stuck!!

Name:

Erik Hart

School:

Western Illinois University

Story

It was the first weekend of school and everyone was out looking for parties and all the new students were wandering around campus. I was sitting in the lobby at 12:30am when a freshman walked by carrying a large duffle bag. The bag seemed heavy, suspecting alcohol, but as I looked at the bad I noticed someting. There was this trail of water and it was coming from the bottom of the bag. I asked the person to stop and open the bag, he complied and I saw 20 cans of beer. The reason the bag was leaking was that the person covered the beer in ice to keep it cold. When I asked him why he said he did not like warm beer; I almost busted out laughing.

Name:

R.

School:

San Jose State University

Story

My very first morning as an RA I had tons of energy and decided that I would get up early and put good luck signs on everyone's door. I opened my door at 6am to find a resident there saying that someone was passed out in the bathroom. Upon checking I found a person (since residents had only been there 24 hours I didn't know his name or what floor he lived on). I couldn't wake him so I called the University Police. He had black crust on his forehead and, being naive, I thought maybe he had electrocuted himself. After the police arrived and woke him up we realized that he had gotten so drunk the night before that he had passed out and gone to the bathroom on himself (hence the black crust). He had drunken so much that he was still drunk, not just hungover... I still consider that my initiation.

Name:

Richard Santangelo

School:

William Paterson University Of New Jersey

Story

We have a hard time delivering Judicial notices to our residents. They either look through the peep hole and see that it is an Ra and do not answer the door, or if they do answer the door they say that they are someone else and that the person we are looking for is not home. So The Resident Director came up with a good idea. They get a slip in the Mail box saying that they have a very important package in the mail. When they come to pick it up they find themselves signing for a judicial slip instead?

Name:

Katie McGranor

School:

Hocking College

Story

I was standing in my doorway one evening, just watching the halls, when a gentle man came through the door and stopped at every door for some reason. I wasn't wearing my glasses, so i wasn't quite sure what he was doing, until he reached my door and attempted to steal my dry erase marker. I asked him what he was doing and he said "ah, nothing." I looked at his hand and he had at least 4 dry erase markers, that he had stolen off the doors. I asked him why he was stealing markers and he replied "I was just being stupid." I made him replace all the markers and write an apology on everyone's door. What a way to start a life of crime!!!!

Name:

Meg Murray

School:

University of Illinois

Story

I had gone to bed early because I had pulled an all-nighter the night before. I must have been super tired or something, because I forgot to put on any pants! well, wouldn't you know, but someone pulled the fire alarm that night. So, i jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway to get my residents to evacuate the building...well, nobody would leave the hallway cause they were too busy laughing at me!! there i was standing in a t-shirt and underwear! it was very funny. now everytime i walk down the hallway i get cat calls and everything!! my residents will never let me forget that one :)

Name:

Paul Osincup

School:

University of Northern Colorado

Story

There was a call to the front desk that there was a man downstairs going through peoples' clothes in the laundry room. When we brought him upstairs, he was wearing a mechanic's jumpsuit. When the police arrived, they unzipped the jumpsuit, and found that he had some pot, and cocaine on him. They also found that he was wearing several articles of women's lingerie. When the police took him back to the station, they noticed that he was walking funny, so they did a body cavity search, and found that he had a potato wrapped in a condom up his butt. It was a cool night.

Name:

Melisa

School:

Baylor University

Story

One of my friends rented the movie Color of Night one night because she heard it was a good plot. We didn't have time to watch it that night so the next day we decided to watch it. I was busy with some other things at the time so I didn't realize that a really scene had started. At first it was playing music while the scene took place but then the music stopped and the actress started moaning. Now in our hall the walls are really thin so a couple of my residents and their guy friends heard it (It was during visiting hours) and came to my room. The first thing they said was "Are you watching a porno?" My friend and I jokingly said yes and then one of the guys asked if he could come in and watch. It was so embarrassing. To clear the record I am not that kind of girl.

Name:

David Chambers

School:

Millsaps College

Story

During the spring parties of the fraternities on campus (which can be a little crazy), the guys in my hall decided to "redecorate" the hall bathroom. I come in at one time, the one of the two stall walls in the bathroom and been broken and parts of the stall wall were all over the floor. So picture this, a hall bathroom with 2 stalls and 1 urinal. ON of the stall walls is missing and so you see a stall wall and then an open toilet. I leave for 30 minutes, come back in and notice that the guys finished their decoration of the bathroom. The second stall wall was now down and parts all over the floor. If the first one was not funny enough, now we had a bathroom with 2 open toilets and one urinal. If I could only upload a picture of this. Since this happened about 2 weeks ago, the hall has had endless number of people coming to see the "open air" bathroom. The guys on the hall have talked about starting to charge people to see the bathroom inorder to raise enough money to pay for it.

Name:

School:

Story

Let me just tell you a little about our dorm -- it is sure to make you laugh, just because you don't have to live with it! Anyways -- our dorm is fairly large (400+ people), it is a tower (8 stories) and it is known as a party dorm. People who live there are largely athletes (VERY big guys) and freshmen. We have had many, many incidents this year, but let me just share a few: we had a sink ripped out of the wall, causing a flood on the floor; we had several bathroom mirrors "mysteriously" broken as they fell from the wall; we had a toilet AND THE ENTIRE SURROUNDING TOILET STALL ripped from the wall and thrown out a window; we have had feces in showers, feces on RA doors, etc.; two arrests; a variety of medical emergencies; yet another toilet stall vanished; study lounge tables thrown out windows; tv's thrown out windows (yes, our guys are obsessed with their windows all of a sudden); stereos thrown down the stairs; study lounge windows punched and shattered; residents tied to chairs and placed in the elevator to ride helplessly up and down; I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but you get the idea. So next time you think that your building is bad, think about us! We survive with a lot of close friendships among the RAs and big smiles on our faces. If your dorm IS worse than ours, take heart, we feel your pain!!! :) (ps -- please don't get the idea that we are not doing our jobs -- we are! I guarantee that if YOU lived here, it would be just as chaotic! it's not a reflection on us, sometimes things just get a little wacky!)

Name:

Michael

School:

University Of Idaho

Story

I always put the date up on my board. Well, April 20th came around and I had written on my board, "Don't forget the date, 4-20. Well, this was an innocent reminder of the day. That night a drunk student comes up to me as I was standing in the hallway. He looked both ways, and then quietly asked if I could get him some weed. I looked dumbfounded at him, and then replied. Do you realize who your talking too. I showed him my badge and he turned so red. I laughed and told him I didn't have any weed, but I sure do have an incident report I'll need you to sign.

Name:

School:

RIC

Story

I was on duty and a resident said "hey Chris can you come downstairs for a minute?" I went to get my keys and then followed the girl downstairs. On our way down I asked her what the problem was. She said there is a girl passed out on the bathroom floor. (nice of her to tell me sooner) I proceeded down to the suite and she said "you may not like the way she is." I asked her to elaborate and she told me that she had no clothes on and was laying in a pile of vomit. She apparently passed out while taking a dump and puking. She was laying in a pile of vomit and shit, with no clothes on. I was shocked. I checked to see if she had a pulse and called the hall director. This was by far one of my worst situations.

Name:

Sean Favreau

School:

Johnson & Wales University

Story

The Vomit experience: I don't know how it is for RA's at your school but at JWU we sometimes get the great honor and privilege of cleaning up someone else's vomit. Well here's how my encounter goes... i got a call at 2:00 am that someone had vomited in the main stairwell. This wasn't my first time dealing with vomit so I went right for the bodily fluid cleanup kit. I headed to the stairwell thinking, just get it done and go to bed. I opened the stairwell door and there was more vomit than I would have thought possible for five people to throw up, it was the nastiest thing i had ever seen. It started up two floors from the lobby and was everywhere (walls, floors, rails you name it, it was there) It looked like they were filming a scene from the exorcist or something. Being the professional that i am i rolled up my sleeves and got to work, one and a half hours and three bodily fluid cleanup kits later i finished.

Name:

Emily

School:

Indiana University

Story

I am an RA for a 4 floor unit. While making a visit to the floor above mine, I heard some girls yell really loudly, "Crap! Emily is on the floor!" Of course I knew immediately that they were up to some rule-breaking! I went to their door and knocked and waited.... A few minutes later, they opened the door where I saw smoke coming from freshly-burnt candles (a big no no). So I just said, "If you guys are doing something that you don't want me to know about, don't yell so loud that I can hear you!" Seeing how foolish they felt, i decided to just give them a warning about the candles! :)

Name:

John Malonson

School:

UCLA

Story

One day I was on duty responding to an emergency call. When I arrived there was a girl sitting on the floor with a bloody gash on her head. Concerned, I radioed for the EMT's (Emergency Medical Team). While I was waiting for them to arrive I asked some of her friends what happened. One the friends proceeded to tell me that they were bored and decided to make a bet. The bet was that the girl could not jump from the top of one bunked bed to the top of the other lofted bed on the other side of the room. Well, the girl succeeded in making the jump but miscalculated her velocity and acceleration due to the fact that she hit her head on the wall which caused her to fall backwards out of the bed. Imagine me trying to be calm and reassuring when I just wanted to explode with laughter. When the EMT's and police finally arrived, I went into the stairway for a second and laughed hysterically. John

Name:

School:

Story

I was working the desk when one of the residents walked up to me. He asked if that was all the mailboxes, pointing to the hall's mailboxes. I told him yes. He had been looking at the code on his key for his correct mailbox instead of the room number. I told him that you didn't go by the code. Then, I proceeded to ask him where he lived, and he started to tell me where he lived before he came to college. I then stopped him, and told him that I needed his room number.

Name:

Jessica Frank

School:

Augustana College

Story

I had the supreme misfortune to be on duty Homecoming night this past year. On 8 pm rounds, the other CA and I walked past a door as the person was coming out--holding a can of beer. We had to go in and take care of the situation. While we were in there, the other guys were giving us total attitude (I should mention that they were freshmen) and just plain not cooperating. I had to laugh out loud, though, when one of the guys tried to reason with me with a 'tude by saying, "It's homecoming weekend and all the parties are closed. Where ELSE were we supposed to drink??"

Name:

MO

School:

Penn State University

Story

alright, so it's the night before Halloween and i got back (around 2am) from one of my friend's costume parties and was sober (i swear) and i went down the hall to talk to one of my residents and came back to my room about a half hour later to go to sleep. as i am clearing off my bed (covered with clothes and random junk) i see a mess of vomit on my pillow, blankets... carpet.. out the hallway and down to the men's restroom! i freaked. then i saw a pair of sneakers and a water bottle sitting on the floor next to my bed. i then put up a sign asking if someone lost their sneakers and to see the RA if they did. after some wondrous help from some of my residents, i did some laundry and slept in my comfy chair. the next day i found out that they belonged to one of MY residents. he didn't remember a thing! needless to say i put him in an alcohol intervention program (the ADVANCED class!).

Name:

Paul

School:

San Jose State University

Story

My second semester as an RA, my staff and I were used to filling out duty logs and some of them got pretty interesting. One night I opened up the log book and read the report, which read, "saw residents on the 7th floor drinking, smoking, playing loud music, with underagedstudents. Could not document...not enough evidence."

Name:

Andy Beyer, RA

School:

Moorhead State University

Story

During the 1998/1999 school year, my first year as an RA, I caught my residents watching a porn movie out in the lounge. Not very funny, but hey, THEY BONDED!!!

Name:

Don Francis

School:

Ripon College

Story

I and the other RA for the building were doing those dreaded Room Condition Report forms before the students arrived. We had a good system down where I would write everything down (because I had good penmanship) and he would look at everything in the room, from the dresser drawers to the closet shelves to the smoke detector's battery (he was 6'5"). The last room was upon us. We were excited to finally be finished. As I wrote down the last "good," I noticed the smoke detector's cover was missing. I asked my RA partner about it. He said it was there. I looked on the RCR... it said it was there, too. He looked under the bed, I looked under the other bed. He looked in the closet, I looked in the desk drawer. Then I saw it. It was in his hand the whole time.

Name:

Fred Ramsey

School:

University of TN at Martin

Story

It was my first year on staff. On of my better residents, had asked me to call his girlfriend and ask her to deliver his clothes. I had tried to call her, but I could not reach her. I later found out that the couple had a falling out. She had taken his clothes and just threw them somewhere. The police was called and we threw a manhunt for some underwear and socks. We found them later out in front of another residence hall. In retrospect this whole episode was quite funny. The girl later caused some roommate conflicts and was sent to another residence hall anyway.

Name:

School:

WKU

Story

One day during the first week of school while I was working the desk one of the girls in my hall, which is predominantly freshmen, called. She asked me if they needed a TV cable. When I told them yes, they then asked what they should do if theirs wasn't long enough. I said that they would then have to get a longer one. The next thing they asked was if the front desk had TV cables for them to use. After they were told that they would have to go buy one, all they said was oh.

Name:

trey

School:

southeatern louisiana university

Story

I was in my room and another RA came to get me to help with an open house bust. He told me that when he was leaving the restroom he saw a guy peeking through the window in the door at the end of the hall and knew that the resident had a female with him. He saw her duck under the door and go outside while he came in to get the phone for her. The RA went upstairs and stood on the ledge on the second floor above them and was watching and waiting. The resident said to the girl, "Wait here while I see if he is around the corner." He came back and told the girl to hurry and they ran in and my friend followed and saw what room they went into. He then came and got me and we went to the room. I knocked on the door heard shuffling and the resident opened the door in his briefs. I asked ,"Is there a female in the room?" The resident responded, wide eyed," No sir." I asked again and the resident lowered his head and said not looking at me or my fellow RA, looking disgusted, "Yes sir." He shut the door and when he did the other RA and I laughed at the look of shock that was on his face when he saw us there. They followed us to the desk and filled out paperwork and she was very pissed at the resident that they had been caught and I asked," Where did you hide her?" The resident responded, ashamed, "Under the bed." We assured him that he was not the first open house violation and definitely not the last. My fellow RA and I were laughing out asses off after they signed their paperwork and left cause of how shocked he was at getting caught. It was funny as hell.

Name:

Brandy

School:

Ohio University

Story

It was my 2nd quarter as a RA. I was on weekend duty and had just finished 2:30am rounds. Well, I asked the women in the room next to me to turn their radio down so that I could get some sleep, and while I was there, I reminded them to lock their door because we had had some vandalism occur in some of the rooms the previous night.

Well, the next morning, I got a knock on my door at about 9am. I opened it to find my resident (who I had warned the previous night) standing there. She asked me to come look in her room, so I followed her. It turns out that she had gone out after I had talked to her and had forgot to lock her door when she came back. While she was sleeping, someone had entered her room and had used the bathroom (#2) on her floor. It was so disgusting. I don't think she ever forgot to lock her door after that.

Name:

Nathan Lee

School:

Texas Tech University

Story

Early one Saturday morning, about 3 a.m. I was awakened by a girl yelling in the room next door. It was well past visitation and this had been a continuous problem on my floor. Fed up with it and too tired to walk room to room, I stood in the middle of the hallway and yelled at the top of my lungs, "It is now 3 a.m.! If you are a female and in my hall you should have been out two hours ago. I will give you thirty seconds to leave and after that I start pounding on doors!" Nine young ladies immediately exited from different rooms all along the hall. I escorted them out and returned to bed.

Name:

Maggie

School:

Towson University

Story

I'm an RA in a high rise building, on a floor of mostly freshman, that is fully equipped with trash chutes on ever floor. It was during the 1st week of school and I heard a lot of commotion out by the elevators I open my door and there are all my residents with huge bags of trash waiting for the elevator. I asked them what they were doing and they said going to throw their trash away. They were all going to ride the elevator down 13 floors in order to throw their trash away in the lobby!!

Name:

Karen McManus

School:

University of Alaska - Fairbanks

Story

One day I was getting ready for classes with my sister, who loves to come and borrow my clothes. I was on duty the night before, so my door sign said "On duty - come in!". My sister went out to use the drinking fountain and I heard a faint knock on the door moments later. I yelled "Sheesh, Colleen, come in!" and in walked a male resident - and I was in my bra! He looked at me, his eyes got huge and then he looked at the floor and mumbled "ugh...locked myself out?" I was mortified!

Name:

School:

Story

I was the first floor RA in a building of four floors and whenever I did rounds in my building my friends on other floors would ask "Don't you belong on the first floor?" so one day I stepped out of my room without my glasses on and with my unaided sight I shouted to my pal "Hey! What are you doing here? This is my floor!" to my surprise the guy turned and ran out of the building. I gave chase, wondering why he had reacted so strangely at the front door I asked the DA if my pal had just gone outside and she said, "NO, but that guy just ran in here without checking in, good job scaring him off!"

Name:

Ryan McCrea

School:

University of Southern Indiana

Story

Hi, My name is Ryan I am an Ra at Greek Court at my college. I know what you are thinking Greek Court. Despite one night while a fellow Ra Jared was on rounds he received a strange phone call. The phone call was from one of the frat houses on campus. The frat guy on the phone was telling Jared he really needed to come to this party they were throwing. Jared told them he would be there in a minute. He was with three other Ra's and security. Sucks to be that guy. His frat brothers are looking for him til this day.

Name:

A nony mouse

School:

SHSU

Story

It is generally understood that RAs could be called on at anytime day or night by residents. Unfortunately, this courtesy is extended to the idiotic residents too. And when I say idiotic, I mean a resident knocking on my door at 3 in the morning to ask if she could get a coke from the machine in the lobby.

Name:

Enrique

School:

WVU

Story

I was on duty one night, and I received a call from a resident on a different floor that one of the rooms on their floor had some strange sounds coming out of it, when i went down to check it out, it turns out their where some strange sounds coming out of the room. All I know is there was a lot of praying going on in that room, because I heard "oh God", and "oh my god" screamed a few times coming out of that room gotta love my coworkers.

Name:

TE

School:

Averett College, Danville, Virginia

Story

One night while I was on duty, I was standing in the stairway at around 12:10 (visitation ends at 12:00, but stairways are neutral ground) and two women walk past me onto my male hall. I followed them and asked them to leave, which they did. When I was doing rounds about 15 minutes later, I found them in the room of one of the guys on my hall. I wrote them up because I had asked them to leave 15 minutes earlier. I did rounds again and came back to my room only to find that one of them had left a signed note on my door asking me to call her to clarify why she had been written up. (so she broke visitation again by coming onto my hall to leave a note) When I got back into my room, the phone rang and sure enough, it was them asking why they had been written up. I tried to explain it to them, but they woke up their RA and had me talk to her and explain the situation. I thought that my fellow RA had fully conveyed the message, but the girls decided to break visitation a fourth time by coming onto my hall again and knocking on my door at 1am. I escorted them to a stairway where it took me about twenty minutes to explain the visitation policy to them once again. What is surprising is that one of the two girls is a junior and knows the rules very well.

If someone is dumb enough to break the same policy four times in one hour, one has to wonder how they even made it into college.

Name:

School:

Story

After several incidents of vandalism only after the second week of school I put up signs around the dorm saying, "NOTICE: ACTS OF VANDALISM ARE SUBJECT TO DISCIPLINARY ACTION." Well, one day I was walking out of my room when a friend (who doesn't attend the university) was with one of my residents noticed the sign. He read the sign, laughed, and then kicked the chair that was in the lobby (with me right behind him). His friend just looked at him and looked at me and said, "um..... that's my RA." He felt really stupid, and I just had to laugh :)

Name:

School:

Story

I was planning to meet with my RD in my room. I asked him to wait outside before I let him in so I could clean up my messy bedroom. He looked kind of suspicious and insisted that it couldn't be that bad. I didn't want him to think that I was hiding anything terrible in my room so I let him in warning him that he would soon know way too much about what I had done the night before. When I opened the door he looked in to find my mattress on the floor and several empty condom wrappers on the ground. All he said was, "Well, at least you safe." and he walked out of the room.

Name:

Chris

School:

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Story

Every week at our staff meetings we nominate a staff member as "Geek of the Week." This is the person who had done the stupidest thing that week. One of our female staff members came out of her room and noticed that only every third light was on in the hallway. She immediately freaked out and started to write up a work order to get the lights fixed. She had written a rather extensive note to the other RA on the floor as well as the Hall Director. When her co-RA read the note she went down to the other RA's room and said I can fix this problem for you and proceeded to flip on the light switch.

Name:

School:

Story

I was on duty one weekend when I received a call from the campus police, they had received a call from someone who heard a girl screaming help from a room on the 2nd floor (a guys floor). I went to check it out, it turned out to be a guy watching Titanic and what the person had heard was the people on the ship screaming help as the boat went down.

Name:

Jeffrey C. Aiello

School:

Western Illinois University

Story

I was going to take a shower in my bathroom, but first I wanted to go to the bathroom. After I finished my business I stood up and flushed the toilet. Well, the water was turned up to high and everything shot out over me. I ran to the shower and cleaned off. Later that week I heard a residents scream while in the bathroom and so I rushed in. I was greeted by a soaking wet resident who had lost the same fight I did with that toilet.

Name:

Jeffrey C. Aiello

School:

Western Illinois University

Story

I was going to take a shower in my bathroom, but first I wanted to go to the bathroom. After I finished my business I stood up and flushed the toilet. Well, the water was turned up to high and everything shot out over me. I ran to the shower and cleaned off. Later that week I heard a residents scream while in the bathroom and so I rushed in. I was greeted by a soaking wet resident who had lost the same fight I did with that toilet.

Name:

Ken

School:

University of Hawaii at Hilo

Story

My dorm is an alcohol free dorm. As me and my partner were sitting in the front desk. We observed one of our residents carry a 1/2 case of beer and couple of bottles. We approached the resident and he told us that they were not his and he was delivering for a friend in the apartment building. We told him that he was going to have to dump all the alcohol on ground. We told him according to our dorm rules all alcohol must be dumped out. As we were dumping out the alcohol, he began to cry. I asked him why he was crying. He said he was crying, because he was going to have pay everyone back, since he did not deliver the beer. Approximately 15 minutes later, we saw the individual come to our desk and said in a low tone of voice, if one of us could unlock his door. I opened his door for him. Through out the walk to his room, he never lifted his head once.

Name:

School:

Story

This was just before winter break and the building was almost empty. My staff and I were hanging out in the lounge and heard noises from the window. When we look out the window, there are about 8 naked pledges (Well, they weren't completely naked, they had on socks) outside the frat house across the street from our dorms. They're running in the street yelling and stopping traffic. Then they run off into the night. We thought it was over until about 20 minutes later four them come out of nowhere and run back into the frat house. Wondering where the rest of them were we sat and waited. By this time one of my staff members had already called campus security and when the last four guys showed up, so did the cops. Three of the guys made it into the house but one of them got stuck on the wrong side of the street. He was hiding behind a camper while the cops were questioning the frat guys. He was out there so long that people began to gather and laugh--He even asked a girl that was walking by if he could borrow her coat. At this point, there were so many people laughing that finally campus security realized the guy was there. As the poor naked guy was peeking around one side of the camper, the officer was walking around the other. Caught and cold, the guy goes with the laughing officer back into the frat house.

Name:

Mike "Oz" Osborn

School:

Western Illinois University

Story

One night while on rounds, I came across a sleeping bag in the hallway. I knocked on the closest door a couple of times before I heard someone say "I think there is someone outside." After knocking again, someone replied "What?" I then asked them to get the sleeping bag out of the hallway. He said he could not. I restated that I was the RA on duty and I needed him to remove the bag. He then said a moment later "I am having sex." I then just walked away so that both of us could finish our jobs!

Name:

Um...I choose not to say.

School:

I choose not to say that either.

Story

We were having staff meeting one night and one of our RA's (who had a tendency to park in the fire lane for hours at a time with his hazard lights on) complained to our director that he had gotten two tickets. Our director chose to inform him that He is the the one who called public safety for the second ticket. Well, John got really angry about it, but calmed down when our RD said that he wasn't the one who called in the first ticket. After staff was over, Robert (another RA) said to another RA under his breath, "Sure won't tell him that I'm the one who called the po-po's the first time."

Name:

Sarah Zenk

School:

Carleton College

Story

I was making my usual "hey, does anybody wanna go swing dancing?" rounds the other night. I stopped in one resident's room and asked if he wanted to come swing dancing with me. He thought for a moment, and said, "No, thanks. Do you want to take a bath with me?" I said, "yeah, sure!" and smiled.

An hour later, I had a meeting with the swing club officers. The aforementioned resident came in and asked, "Do you have any D batteries? Cause I need to set the mood for our bath." I promptly pulled a package of 8 D batteries out of my desk drawer. "You're amazing, Zenk," my resident said. "I know," I said. My co-swing-officers just gaped.

Later that night, I left a note on this resident's door that said "Thanks for the bath...Sarah xo". About ten minutes later, the resident's roommate came into my room and said, "It's not fair. You'll take a bath with my roommate, but not with me." I told him that I'd take a bath with him the next night.

The next morning we all went to lunch together (about ten residents and myself) and the first resident said "so are we taking a bath tonight?" and I replied "yeah... same time, same place" and gave my best flirtatious smile.

Now everyone on my floor wants to "take a bath" with me.

It's funny how you don't actually have to DO anything to create a floor joke.

Name:

Joe

School:

Central Michigan University

Story

During the first few weeks of school my sophomore year my duty partner and i decided to do a round outside of the building to ascertain that everything was okay. As we walked around the building i commented that the screen had falen out of my window that day.

He turned to me and asked (quite seriously) "Don't you get cold with the screen out?"

Name:

School:

Story

Well i am an RA in the largest all MALE dorm on the East coast. So you can imagine what goes on in here. Our reputation far exceeds any other Residence Hall this side of the U.S. Anywayz, so one day im walking outside the main entrance and happen to see someone on the 4th floor throw a big bag (of liquid), turned out to be urine, right out our lounge window. It struck the poor fellow walking in front of me. Needless to say the guy was pissed off.....or should i say "Pissed-on" ??? It was really funny and i couldnt stop laughing, but it was a horrible prank. Now every time i walk by my dorm, i make sure im looking skywards.....in case i get hit by any of these "flying objects".

Name:

Jennie "the klutz" Mills

School:

Baylor University

Story

For all you folks that don't know me, I'm the klutziest (is that a word?) person in the world. At our dorm we have tables that campus organizations can borrow to advertise certain events. These are pretty heavy tables, and we ask the organizations to put them away whenever they leave. One organization failed to put their table away, so it became my responsibility. As I was kicking the legs in, the table slipped and the corner landed right on my foot. My Director came out of her office when she heard the noise and proceeded to take me to the hospital, because I had broken my foot. How many people can say they broke their foot in the lobby of their residence hall?

Name:

Michelle Grana

School:

University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

Story

This was my funniest incident so far this year. I was working at the desk when another R.A. told me that there were rumors of a snake on the 8th floor. I said that I would go deal with it. I went up there and saw a bunch of people screaming in the hallway. So, I look in this room and I see a snake a foot and a half long, black and skinny- it was being whipped around in the center of the room by this buy who was trying to shove it in an empty Pepsi box. Another guy was jumping up and down on his bed- screaming like a maniac. I was also screaming. I finally calmed everyone down, and I told the resident of the room that I was going to have to write him up an incident report. He starts yelling at me screaming, "the snake isn't even mine! How can I get an IR for that!" I said, "Well if the snake isn't yours, why was it being whipped around the center of your room?" He replied that he had come home from class and the snake was coiled around his heat vent hissing at him. He said it was the guy's 2 doors down, and he must have not locked it up. Therefore we figured it crawled through the heat vent. Meanwhile the guy with the snake in the Pepsi box takes it down the elevator and ran into the owner of the snake. He said to let it go by the tennis courts, because it was only a garden snake. The owner of the snake came upstairs and I told him what happened- and that he was going to receive an IR. I also told him to get rid of the rest of his snakes. He responded with, but those are my babies. He asked what kinds of pets were appropriate to have in the residence halls, and I told him fish were acceptable. I also told him that his snake freaked out everyone because it was hissing and acting violent. Life is never dull as an R.A. I love you, all you res lifey people!

Name:

Colleen Morse

School:

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Story

One night when my duty partner and I were on rounds, we passed through a suite where a girl was giving her boyfriend "oral pleasure" in the middle of the suite. They stopped when they saw us and we just kept walking on. The next night we passed through the same suite and the couple was sitting on the couch watching TV. The boy said, "So what time do you guys do rounds on the weekend again?" Pretty sad considering it was the middle of second semester. My duty partner and I were laughing for days.

Name:

Kate

School:

UW-Oshkosh

Story

Okay, this story was serious, but it's kinda funny looking back at it!

It was a Sunday night and I had gotten off of my weekend duty marathon and was getting ready to head out for the evening. I headed off to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Then, as I walked back to my room I saw a young man laying on the floor face down with one of his friends dragging him by one arm across the carpet. I asked "What are you doing!?!" Followed by "Is he okay?" The friend kicked his passed out buddy and simply replied "He's fine, he just had too much to drink, can you help me get him up the steps." Then he dropped the guys arm, which fell like a rag. Needless to say, I replied, "No, but I can get him the University Police and an Incident Report." Turns out though, the passed out guy spent the night in the hospital! And to think, the guy that was dragging him was upset that we got emergency personnel involved!

Story

It was my first night on duty for the year. Me and the other Ra (both new RAs) were doing rounds on the fourth floor which is the smoking floor. We got to the short wing and smelled pot. Well we called the police which is what we were supposed to do. The funny part is that the guys we busted hadn't even been in the building for 24 hours and they had been busted 2 times in the previous year.

Name:

School:

Story

The first weekend of fall semester me and a few other RA friends of mine were sitting in the lobby of our building...

We work in a freshmen building so you can imagine some of the situations that occur the first weekend that they are there. Most of the freshmen were coming in drunk. It didn't bother us too much because our school doesn't really have anything against drunkenness unless it's excessive. Anyways...the elevator was broken and there was a sign on the door saying so. Well on kid came in and tried to key the elevator. My friends and I said to him that it was broken. He didn't pay any attention to us and kept trying to call the elevator. We kept repeating that it was broken until finally he realized someone was talking to him. He turned around and we said, again, "The elevator is broken. Can't you see the sign?" So he looks at the sign and rips it down. I said, "Hey, do you mind putting that back up!" He whips around... stumbles a little, and says in a snotty voice..."Who are you, the RA???" My friends and I all chimed in at the same time with a very strong..."YES!!" He quickly put the sign back up and said, "I'm not drunk; I am not drunk" He went up the stairs and we all had a good laugh!

Name:

Caryn Grundle

School:

Bridgewater State College, MA

Story

Here's one for the books! I was on rounds at 12:30am, my badge in clear view, when I heard loud shouts and clapping coming from a male residents room. I knocked on the door and one of the two residents living in that room opened the door just enough to see me. I could see from where I was that there was a female stripper in the room! She had not started to take off her clothes yet, so I escorted her out to the front door, and bid her a fond adieu! Boy were those guys mad at me!! Tee-Hee!

Name:

Meghan Dorn

School:

Arizona State University

Story

Here's a lil' funny I found! :p

The Perfect RA 1. Bob Smith, Resident Assistant, can always befound 2. hard at work on his floor. Bob works proactively, without 3. lying to his Hall Directors or drinking with residents. Bob never 4. thinks twice about helping his fellow RAs, and he always 5. finishes his assignments on times. Often he takes extended 6. measures to complete his work, sometimes skipping 7. vacations. Bob is a Resident Assistant who has absolutely no 8. vanity in spite of his time, accomplishments and profound 9. knowledge in his field. I firmly believe that Bob can be 10. classified as a high-caliber RA, the type which can not be 11. dispensed with. Consequently, I duly recommend that Bob be 12. named Resident Assistant of the Year, and a proposal will be 13. executed as soon as possible. * * * * * Addendum: That idiot was standing over my shoulder while I wrote the report sent to you earlier today. Kindly reread only the odd numbered lines.

Thank you.

Name:

Mark

School:

University of Southern Indiana

Story

This is my first year as an RA. The main difference between my school and a lot of others is that we live in apartments instead of residence halls. Well, it was the middle of the beginning of the year check-in when I had an exited father come to my apartment with a problem. He said that I needed to go to his daughter's apartment and check the electrical sockets because the bottom sockets did not work. When I got over to the apartment in question, I went into the room and saw that he had a lamp plugged into the bottom socket and he started to show me that the socket was not working. After he showed me the problem, I asked him if he tried the light switch. He said no. So I flipped the light switch up and sure enough the lamp worked.

Name:

School:

Story

So we were on rounds one night when we ran smack into a guy with a plastic bag with a sixpack minus one inside. We asked him what was in the bag and he replied beverages for that night. After we informed him that since this was a dry campus alcohol was not allowed and no it didn't matter if he was 21 (he was 18)he was quite upset. He then asked:" so just where exactly am I supposed to keep it cold if I can't keep it in the fridge in my room?" I had to let my partner respond as I was attempting not to laugh out loud. If only all alcohol docs were that easy

Name:

James

School:

Central Washington University

Story

We had a guy vandalizing the men's bathroom all year; soap, towels, etc. Anyway the last week of the school year I was hanging out in their room, at this point I didn't know who was doing it. They then got the bright ideal to go into the girl's bathroom and throw their old hot dogs from their fridge into the girls showers, right in front of me. I guess they thought they couldn't get in trouble that late in the year.

Name:

School:

Story

This happened to me near the end of my first year as an RA. I had a good group of guys on my floor, they weren't angels, mind you, but they were smart about things. Well, one night when I was duty, I was sitting in my room, when one of my residents came to my door and told me he was locked out of his room, I said cool, and got my master key and went to let him in. Well, as I unlocked his door, he turned to me and said, "Do you mind if I put my beer in my room?" and preceded to take a bottle of beer from inside his coat. I just looked at him completely dumbstruck (he was 18) and said no, and that I would have to write him up. He put up a small argument and then decided it wasn't worth it, but also decided that he wanted to go out with a bang, and told my to put in the report that he was completely unruly, and that he hit me.

Name:

Melissa Watrous

School:

Central Missouri State University

Story

One night, I was on duty. It was a Thursday and a rather slow night. I was so bored that I was almost excited to hear the phone ring. Well, it was the Office Assistant at the front desk telling me that there was a resident locked out. So, I ran downstairs so I could let her in. This girl was wearing her bra and undies (well, it's an all-girl's residence hall, but still!). She was SO embarrassed -- I guess she opened her door and stepped out to talk to her friend for a second and the door slammed behind her. She can't look at me anymore without blushing. :)

Name:

Dog

School:

????????

Story

Last week a friend and I were on duty. We went with two of the coordinators to visit our boss. After a deep conversation about nothing I noticed a male walking out on the front lawn. He was facing the main road. I yelled to the student in front of three bosses "hey are you pissing on the lawn" this student replied in a drunken voice "yup" As he said this the poor boy turned way too fast splashing himself. The other RA then yelled out did you piss on yourself? The poor boy replied "I don't think so" We could see him looking at the mess he made on his pants.

Name:

James

School:

Central Washington University

Story

I was in the room of the other RA on my floor and we were chatting. A while later three of our residents walked out of the room next door and instead of turning left to go down the stairwell, they turned right and walked right in front of us and all said hello. Well I got up a minute later and for some unknown reason, the hallway smelled like pot. And after a few discrete sniffs we narrowed it down to the room the three people had just come out of. Well needless to say we contacted the authorities and they were reprimanded for the pot, but not for being idiots and smoking pot in the room next door to the RA.

Name:

Eusebio Garcia

School:

California State University Northridge

Story

I caught a resident smoking on the balcony while doing outside rounds. I asked his name, he said "Jeff". I told him I'd be up to speak with him when I finished my round. When I went to the room, the residents had their door open so I peep in and asked for Jeff. A different guy said "Yeah, I'm Jeff", I said "No your not, the guy on the balcony is Jeff". I asked to search the balcony but to my surprise, no Jeff. The Jeff I saw was of Mexican decent, the guy claiming to be Jeff was African-American. I asked to see ID on the guy who claimed to be Jeff and lo and behold he was Jeff. I double checked the roster and this guy did live there. I figured I was in the wrong room. I quickly went down one floor just to make sure, then I realized I wasn't in the wrong room in the first place. So I went back up the room. I heard arguing in the hall, I stopped and noticed that the "Jeff" I was looking for was in trouble with the real Jeff. The fake Jeffs' real name is "Jeremy" . Jeff was really mad at Jeremy and told Jeremy never to come back to his apt. I didn't write up the situation 'cause I figured Jeremy got enough punishment from his friend. I don't think he'll pass himself off as someone else ever again.

Name:

Don Baumgatner

School:

Western Illinois University

Story

Well it was a Tuesday night around 9:00 p.m when we all piled into the room where we have the staff meeting in. The meeting went well but around 9:30 the smell of pot came lingering in. We all thought it was just cigarette smoke, but it got very strong so we decided to investigate. We found a male resident smoking some pot right out side one of our Assistant Complex Directors apartments. Talk about the wrong time and place.

Name:

Serenity

School:

Central Connecticut State University

Story

I know that all my friends are going to laugh at me for submitting this, but I think this website is the BEST! My funniest story happened my first semester as an R.A. My Residence Hall is a Co-ed building, divided up by floors, every other floor male then female. So I was new and still wet behind ears, so while I was doing a round on one of the female floors I heard a lot of giggling coming from a corner room. They had their door open so I poked my head into the room, what I saw was four of the girls had hooked all of their bras into a chain and were lowering them out the window to the guys that lived below them. They were so startled by me coming to the door they dropped the bras and they fell down two floors onto another resident's window. We were all laughing really hard after that!

Name:

M

School:

UW-Oshkosh

Story

After having a sleepover on my floor the night before, which most of my wing did not attend due to their desire to drink, I was pretty tired. After I finally crawled out of bed, I stumbled into the bathroom. To my surprise I was surrounded by pictures of nude men. One of the girls that had gone out the night before decided to get up and add to our bathroom decorations. Unfortunately, these decorations could offend someone, so I had to do a little CYA by ripping them down. They took it pretty well, so I am sure that they knew I would probably remove them. All I know is that after seeing all those pictures, I have no desire to see the more intimate parts of the male anatomy again for a little while.

Name:

Erin

School:

Story

I got a knock on my door one Thirsty Thursday night (technically Friday morning) at one am. I was told that one of my residents had been "partying a little too hard" only to find her on the floor in her room, non-responsive and laying in a pool of her own vomit. It was a long night and when, after splashing water on her face several times, she began to talk, she would speak only in Spanish. At first, we thought she was speaking in tongues, but somebody who knew some Spanish (it was VERY slurred....we aren't completely stupid) recognized it. It was kind of amusing, but also scary. We had to call an ambulance and ask somebody to watch her all night. Not my idea of a good time since I didn't get finished with the IR until 4am, but it's definitely one I'll remember.

Name:

??

School:

Could be anywhere!

Story

Ok. Picture this. finals week...24 hour quiet hours. Predominantly first-year hall. (See any trouble brewing???) Anyways. I am on duty hanging out with the hall director (he is a good friend of mine) and it is late. So I get called to go to a floor for a noise complaint. I go and document a resident who is making too much noise. I figure it is over and go back to the director's apartment. About an hour and a half later, (2:30am) the director gets paged because someone called 911 from our hall. Guess who... YEP! The guy from the situation I documented earlier had called the POLICE @ 911 for a NOISE COMPLAINT. So the police get there (FIVE of them) and they show up at this guy's door. We can hear music playing and they begin knocking. The guy refuses to open the door. Then I hear it....this guy is playing a RAP SONG "F#$K the police"! Can you believe it? Needless to say, by the time we left that night Mr. Noise Complaint had been handcuffed in his boxer shorts and almost arrested for a prank 911 call....maybe you had to be there -- but just PICTURE IT!

Name:

Jenr

School:

Illinois Wesleyan University

Story

My best friend is an RA in another building at my school. One night, I was talking to her on the phone when the fire alarm went off. She swore and told me she had to leave. About 20 minutes later, she called me back laughing. I asked her what had happened. Turns out, she had burned some popcorn and thrown it away, which smoldered so much that it set off the fire alarm! She thought it was one of her residents trying to be stupid, but it was her all along!

Name:

Rob Crowley

School:

Roanoke College

Story

I was on rounds in a freshman building when I passed a room had a smell of burning chemicals or something coming from it. I figured the smell must have been from a candle. Candles are not allowed in the residence halls here. I knocked on the door and the resident opened it widely holding a sweater in one hand and a lighter in the other. I was very confused by this. I asked "are you burning candles?" He laughed and said "no, I'm lighting my sweaters on fire." I just stared at him trying to figure out what he said. He continued "yeah, you spray hairspray on your sweater and light it and it burns all those little balls off." I asked if he thought that might be a fire hazard, and proceeded to give him a citation (for being stupid??). As I turned to leave his friend came walking down the hall with an arm-full of sweaters.

Name:

Jenn

School:

Purdue University

Story

I finally made it to bed at about 3am, Sunday morning. Dead to the world, I slowly came around and realized that my phone was ringing. It was, oh…about 6am. One of my ladies was calling to tell me that a male was just knocking on her door for a long period of time. Now, this is an all female hall where males are SUPPOSED to be escorted by their lady at all times. Anyhow, the resident then proceeds to tell me that when she opened her door, he took off down the hall and darted into our bathroom…again, strictly off limits to males. Ok…so I figured I would go down, find the guy, and take care of the situation. Well, this isn’t all…my resident THEN tells me that, oh yeah…he appeared to be naked. Wonderful…so I pull myself out of bed and start searching throughout the building for some naked boy. Not until I searched all of my floor did I start to really wake up and think, "What in the world am I going to do if I find a naked boy running around??? Excuse me sir, can I see your i.d.??" Well, whether it was lucky or not, I never ran into our naked boy visitor. =)

Name:

Jenny H

School:

Framingham State College, Mass

Story

I was on duty with an RA and it was her first night. She was new to our building, which is kind of maze like till you get used to it. We were doing rounds when we came upon a huge puddle of vomit. She was so grossed out by this that it made her have to vomit! The only problem was that she didn't know where the ladies room was (we were in a male hallway). She went running around with me chasing after her and finally made it to the bathroom!!

Name:

School:

osu

Story

My experience as a first year RA brought many challenges to me. But there is one incident that sticks out to me. I live in an all female residence hall so males must be escorted at all times. Well this one gentleman had a lot of friends on my floor and so he would make surprise visits to the girls. I warned him the first time and it did not work so I had to precede and write him up. The second time I caught him was faced to face when the elevator doors opened and he tried to slide in unnoticed off my floor as I was returning from class. Boy was he shocked to be face to face with me. He commented and I quote "Aren't you suppose to be in class? I thought you had class right now." Well I quickly realized that Jboard (judicial board) was not going to clear him of being unescorted, so I had to get a little creative. I went and spoke to some of my residents and asked them how they felt about his surprise visits. They replied that they did not like it and that they had asked him numerous times to call them and they would go get him from downstairs. That they knew that his actions could get them in trouble, but he did not seem to care. I asked them if they would be willing to help me cure him of his surprise visits, and my residents said they would help. SO here's how I handled it. My residents called him at home and told him that I had just come and talked to them about the escort policy and that they almost got in trouble because of him. He preceded to tell them that he could handle me and that next time he was on the floor that he would have "words" with me, and so forth and so on. You all get the picture. Well little did he know but he was on speaker phone and I heard everything he said. The girls told him after he was done talking that if he really wanted to talk to me that I was sitting right there and that I had heard everything he said. He was so shocked because I had gotten him and he knew it. I talked with him and let him know that his being unescorted on the floor would not be tolerated and that then the girls informed him that they did not appreciate his surprise visits any longer. Well from then on he was always escorted. And now as a second year RA when I see him he still shakes his head and smiles and says you got me, and then kindly motions to his escort and says see I am escorted. I just have to smile and laugh. Sometimes people have to learn a rule in unusual ways.

Name:

Ryan Deeter

School:

Purdue University

Story

I have a resident that is usually kinda quiet and he doesn't usually say much. We have three sinks in our side of the bathroom and one Monday I was at the left sink and my resident was at the middle sink, I was shaving and he was washing his face. I said good morning and he replied and that was pretty much the conversation. The next morning at about the same time we were back at the same sinks doing the same things the same "good Morning" and that was all of the conversation. The next day it was the exact same time and sinks and everything but this time as I when I was heading back to my room he said kinda soft and slow "I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning" mostly you just have to be there for this one to be that funny but it absolutely cracked me up because it was so un expected.

Name:

School:

Story

Great way to start off a new job. During fall RA training all of the new RA's at my school go through a program called "behind closed doors". This always takes place in a residence hall on the far end of campus so most of us had to walk about fifteen minutes to get there. When I arrived at the meeting place in one of the halls I noticed that all the lights were out. I was so tired at this point that I really didn't think about it all that much until I noticed that the staff of the nearest hall was not present. Everyone was tired and complaining that the other staff was holding things up, needless to say we all wanted to be back in our beds. One of the RD's announced that the other staff would be late because two of them were stuck in an elevator (as a result of the power outage) and one had accidentally locked herself in a residents room, which was odd because all the rooms lock from the inside.

Name:

School:

The Ohio State University

Story

One afternoon my hall director called and told me I needed to come get the key for the fuse box on my floor. A resident on my floor called the front desk and said that she thought the electricity in her room had gone out. So I went ALL the way downstairs (from the 10th floor) and ALL the way back up. I ran into my co (the other RA on my floor) as I was getting off the elevator. I told him what was going on and he decided to assist me. While I was in the hallway trying to see which fuse was blown. My co was in the room telling me to flip the switches. Finally my co told me to stop because he'd found the problem. He came out of the room trying not to laugh. Finally when he composed himself, he told me that the girl couldn't turn her stuff on because her power strip wasn't on!

Name:

Phil McHenry

School:

Gordon College  (Wenham, MA)

Story

While on a round i heard noises coming from a room. I busted down the door to discover TWO feet on the floor, in direct violation of the three feet on the floor policy. Upon further investigation, i determined that there was only one person in the room, and my entering had then increased thee foot total to four, well within the legal limit for proper number of feet. we then had a prayer circle and went to bed. God Bless.

Name:

Jennifer Sillix

School:

Pittsburg State University In Kansas that it!

Story

One night while my fellow RA was on duty I had decided to keep him company so that he would not be as bored while waiting on rounds. Just as a little side note this is finals week and it is 24 hour quiet hours here. My friend had went on the midnight rounds and I was playing this wonderful stress relieving game on his computer. When all of the sudden there was this horrible beeping sound coming from outside. My friend lives in the basement of our hall, so in order to look out the window I had to stand on his bed. Just imagine the look on his face when he returned from rounds and there I was standing on his bed. Of course I can not see anything that could produce such a loud and annoying sound. At this point we decided to go outside and check out this sound. I made it outside before my friend and I noticed that there was this small mechanical unit lying in the grass, right outside of my friends room. My first reaction was BOMB! Once he got there we looked it over and he thought the same thing, so we headed in to get our ARHD and called the HD to come over and help us check this out. There was also another RA from our building that had came out to discover the same thing that we had. So just imagine 5 people hovered over this small mechanical unit that is lying on the ground, with residents that were screaming turn that thing off, well they added some other words but we will leave that part out. Finally we decide that we need to figure out what this is and how to turn it off. So our HD kicks it, and low and behold someone had decided to play a practical joke on us and take apart a fire alarm and toss it our their window. However they must have gone to a lot of work because our fire alarm system does not run off of batteries. I guess that you can always find a lot of other things to do rather than study for your finals.

Name:

Cela

School:

CMU

Story

This past weekend, I walked into a "normal" alcohol situation. I took a moment to smell a cup that had brown liquid in it. I then asked the people in the room who the Rum and Coke belong too. One of the men in the room piped up and said "first of all it's Pepsi and Rum". At that point I knew who that cup belonged to.

Name:

Kelly

School:

Plymouth State College

Story

Last fall a fellow CA of mine was sitting in his first class of the semester. The teacher had each student say there name, year, were they lived, and one thing that know one knew about them. My fellow CA just sat back and listened because he was the last person to go. The person before him was a female and she said she lived in Pemi Hall and had a hamster in her closet. My fellow CA said, "My name is Robert, I'm a jr., I live in in Pemi, and I guises the one thing that know one knows about me, at least in this class that I'm a CA in Pemi, and you my dear are busted!" The girls fast was bright red and her hamster sat in the hall office for the night till her parents could come pick it up. But our staff got a good laugh about it. Some people just can't figure out what they should not say in public.

Name:

Kimberly Jones

School:

Penn State

Story

I was woken up at 3:30 a.m. by loud screaming and shouting at the opposite end of the hall. As I was walking down to the wing, I hear doors slamming and girls shrieking. When I finally got to where all of the commotion was coming from I realized that three girls were burning ants off of the wall with hairspray and a lighter. I was taken completely off-guard. Looking back, I find it funny but during the incident I was not amused.

Name:

Laura

School:

Story

One Tuesday night while on duty I received a strange phone call from a fellow RA in another building - she seemed awfully upset and wanted me to come over so she could show me something. Our Head Residents were in their weekly meeting and thinking that she had a real situation to deal with I went on over to her building. When I arrived she simply said "you won't believe this". She then proceeded to press play on her VCR. Up on the screen came a homemade porno of one her residents having sex on the bike rack outside the building the night before. 2 of her male residents on the 4th floor had taped it and turned a copy over to her. Not knowing exactly what to do, we called the University Police. 2 male officers responded to our call and we just couldn't explain it so we showed them the video. The look on their faces was hilarious. It took every ounce of strength I had not to bust out laughing at the young lady on the video tape when she was brought to my fellow RA's room and was showed the video. She said she was proud of herself and then proceeded to ask for a copy of the video from the officers. I think this must be the strangest thing I've encountered since becoming a SRA.

Name:

Don Bradshaw

School:

University of Alaska Fairbanks

Story

Somebody pooped on my door.

Name:

School:

Story

Name:

M. Robinson

School:

SUNY New Paltz

Story

I was on a round when one of my residents called me into her room to meet her sister. They were all drinking so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. She went on to explain how they were going to go out but and I quote, "we were to young to get into any of the clubs in town(-21) so we decided to come back here and drink. Left without a choice I had to ask them both to pour out the beers. Her sister was shocked to find out I was an RA.

Name:

M. Robinson

School:

SUNY New Paltz

Story

I was on a round when one of my residents called me into her room to meet her sister. They were all drinking so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. She went on to explain how they were going to go out but and I quote, "we were to young to get into any of the clubs in town(-21) so we decided to come back here and drink." Left without a choice I had to ask them both to pour out the beers. Her sister was shocked to find out I was an RA.

Name:

Zach

School:

University of British Columbia, Canada

Story

One night I returned to my floor in Totem Park residence after a hard night of studying. The floor was in high spirits, as my dragon boat team had won our division and were in the finals the next day. I entered the floor lounge, which was packed with some very "jolly" residents. They were acting strangely and I figured that they must be trying to hide something, but I couldn't figure out what. The lounge sink was full of suds-an odd occasion in our usually disgusting lounge. I was just about to leave when a resident entered the room with a mug, casually walked over to the sink, and scooped out a full mug of beer!! It turns out the guys had stolen a half-empty keg of beer from a local beer garden, and with no tap for the keg, had simply stuck a key inside and sprayed the beer into the sink! They had fooled other RAs into thinking they were doing dishes, but they finally goofed up! Those crazy guys.....

Name:

Tara

School:

Fitchburg State

Story

One of my residents came flying into my room with a plate of sour cream, salsa, mayonnaise, and taco chips. She had it all over her face. Apparently, someone knocked on her door dressed in black and threw it inn her face....I couldn't keep a strait face while looking at her. I felt bad, but it was soooo funny!!!

Name:

J.Vermeire

School:

Illinois State University

Story

Name:

Lina Montano

School:

Colorado State University

Story

Some of the residents use floors in our complex as trash receptacles for pizza boxes (I guess they are too lazy) and expect others to clean up after them. Well, as a responsibility to prevent fire hazards we are to dispose of the potential fire hazards. Our staff had decided to begin collecting the pizza boxes and by using the order tag, return them to their rightful owner for proper disposal. Residents caught on to this and began ripping off the tag or scratching their name and room number off of the box. Well, While on rounds one evening my duty partner and I ran into a nice little pile of pizza boxes with the name scratched off, but they left the room number and phone number. We knocked on the door to return the box, but they would not open the door. We knew that they were in there so using our phones we called the number on the pizza box. Standing outside the door, we could hear the phone ring... We let them know that we knew it was theirs and they had to throw their own trash away. I was laughing so hard because all of the hassle trying to be sneaky so you don't have to throw your pizza box!! well they took the box and we headed down the hall when the resident opened his door and proceeded to pick up the rest of the pizza boxes in the hall. It was hilarious.

Name:

Lina Montano

School:

Colorado State University

Story

Some of the residents use floors in our complex as trash receptacles for pizza boxes(I guess they are too lazy) and expect others to clean up after them. Well, as a responsability to prevent fire hazards we are to dispose of the potential fire hazards. Our staff had decided to begin collecting the pizza boxes and by using the order tag, return them to their rightful owner for proper disposal. Residents caught on to this and began ripping off the tag or scratching their name and room number off of the box. Well, While on rounds one evening my duty partner and I ran into a nice little pile of pizza boxes with the name scratched off, but they left the room number and phone number. We knocked on the door to return the box, but they would not open the door. We knew that they were in there so using our phones we called the number on the pizza box. Standing outside the door, we could hear the phone ring... We let them know that we knew it was theirs and they had to throw their own trash away. I was laughing so hard because all of the hassle trying to be sneaky so you don't have to throw your pizza box!! well they took the box and we headed down the hall when the resident opened his door and proceeded to pick up the rest of the pizza boxes in the hall. It was hilarious.

Name:

Dan Nugent

School:

Seton Hall University

Story

I work in a residence hall for first year students. I was a little nervous on the day that the residents moved in because I am a first year RA and I was also on duty that night. I had no idea how easy the freshmen were about to make my job. I was doing rounds at about 2am when I got into an elevator that was already occupied by two female students. After about a minute one of the girls turned to me and said "you're cute, wanna come to a party"... I had my clip board in my hand, documentation forms attatched and I just stared at her. Eventually I said "sure" and followed her to a room. I got to the door and asked if I could enter. I walked in and identified myself as an RA and asked for the party-goers ID's. Everyone on my staff still laughs about it when we see the girl who invited me. She'll never make that mistake again!!!

Name:

Lori

School:

University of Iowa

Story

This happened last year, my first year as an RA. All year long we had problems with a certain floor I fondly referred to (in private) as the "Hell Floor." These guys had ripped their drinking fountain off the wall, flooding their own lounge, and had the gall to complain later that they couldn't use the lounge. Poor babies! The place was always trashed, they were constantly drinking and could be really threatening. I would never go up there alone to confront violations. One night it was just horrible. We had a fire alarm and constant noise problems. On my way back inside the building I stopped in the office to write up a report (along with two other RAs who were also having a lovely night). Another RA radioed down that she was up on the hell floor and needed assistance. I volunteered (stupid me!) to go up and help. It was probably 2-3AM at this point. I went up and saw a sight I will never forget. The fire hose was on the floor, running the length of the hallway, there were four public safety officers, two in the hallway and two in a room, broken glass on the floor, tons of residents standing outside their doors, watching the proceedings, and the other RA, yelling at residents to get back in their rooms. DPS finished arresting a guy, whom they had seen carting large pieces of broken glass to his room, for all the alcohol they found when they followed him. I dutifully wrote down names and SSNs, and when all seemed calm, inquired about the fire hose. The other RA told me the story. Apparently after coming in from the fire alarm, the guys had broken the glass on the fire hose cabinet (the only glass cabinet in their hallway that still had the glass intact) and had dragged the hose along the hallway, with the intent of turning it on in the stairwell (the 3rd floor stairwell). Apparently as the one guy got to the stairway door he yelled back to his friend to turn on the hose and then opened the door to find DPS right in front of him. (DPS started coming directly to this floor after alarms in order to head off this kind of thing). They had only gotten the hose partially turned on and so didn't manage to flood anything. After DPS took off and the guys had returned to their rooms for the most part, I turned to the other RA and asked her what to do about the hose. We both knew the minute we were gone that hose was going to be turned on. She radioed for the hall manager to come up. We gathered the hose close to the cabinet, picked up the glass and waited. Eventually the hall manager came and looked at the hose, too. We all stood staring at it for a moment until she suggested we just try to put it back for now. We tried our best, but we soon realized the dumb hose was leaking. Unable to get it to stop, she was forced to call Emergency Maintenence to help. (Now these guys are always incredibly grumpy and seem to enjoy punishing us by arriving as slowly as possible). I was lucky enough to be the one elected to stay and wait and "guard" the hose until maintenence came. During this time I think every guy in the hallway came by at some point and asked me what happened (as if they didn't know) and what I was doing. A few guys really got into complaining to me about not being able to use the lounge. I explained that it had been flooded and was ruined. One guy told me his uncle was a lawyer and he was thinking of suing the University because he was guaranteed certain things - like a lounge - when he paid his housing. I don't remember what I said, but I think I wished him good luck. Around 5am the guy finally showed up, did exactly the same thing we did and used his wrench to turn off the trickle of water. He beligerently explained to me that he couldn't do anything more and when maintence came in (at 8am - three hours away) they would have to deal with it. I slowly walked back to my room and thanked God that my girls didn't seem compelled to act like this.

Name:

Mark

School:

Shenandoah University

Story

A resident came to me as I was about to go to bed and asked me to look at something in his room. Being the good RA, I followed him to his room where he shut the door and turned off the light. I was a little worried at first, but he directed my attention to the wall opposite his sink mirror. The word 'VAMPIRE' was written in glow in the dark paint backwards so it appeared correctly in the mirror. He swore that neither he nor his roommate had put it there, and it was definately not there the night before. I asked him to turn the light on, which he did, and I looked at the wall. I couldn't see anything in the light which freaked me out a little and after making sure that they were not trying to be funny (I didn't think they were because they were two of my least troublesome residents) I painted over the word. We had their locks changed the next day.

Name:

Josh Penna

School:

Alfred University

Story

One night while on call I was making my rounds and stopped to talk to some of the female residents about how their day and week was going. Our rounds start at 10pm. Well one of the rooms at the end of the hall were getting ready to out for the evening. While chatting and doing my rounds I found it peculiar that the room at the end of the hall would open about 8 inches and people were coming in and out. Some times the girls would only stick their heads out just to see where I was. Several times one girl got bold enough to come back to her room smelling of alcohol while I was standing in her doorway talking to her roommate and friends. Now the only people in my building old enough to drink are all on the res life staff. Finally at midnight I went to finish my rounds for the night. I walked down to the end of the hall where the room was and the whole end smelled like a bar. I stood in front of the room waiting for the girl to finish her conversation with a hall mate about going out that night. Needless to say I was planning on ruining her plans. I confronted her and I asked if she had been drinking. Her immediate response was NO but quickly changed to YES. So then I asked if she had been drinking in her room. Again the NO YES response came. So I informed her of the University alcohol policy (which is zero tolerance for underage consumption) and told her I needed her ID card and those of all of those in the room. I went into the room and all this time she kept trying to rationalize her way out of the violation. In all I made them dump the remaining beer and confiscated the 27 empty bottles and 4 pint cans. After all this I went down to the staff office which is right next to the RD apt to document the situation. Well my RD came in to say hello and we talked about the situation. Well while writing up the report the accused walked by the staff office griping about what had happened. Well me RD was not going to stand for the crying about what they had done, so she asked them what they thought would be fair. Well since they were honest and cooperated with what they had done wrong that nothing should happen to them. Well the RD asked if it was alright to drink in her room if she was honest about it and the girl replied no. Then my RD asked if it was ok to drink off campus and then come back to her room and the girl replied yes but it is not legal). Finally my RD asked is it legal for you to drink even if you are honest about doing so and you are under 21 anywhere, and the girl replied no, so my RD said "so what's your problem." The girl realized she had been fooled and huffed away out of the building. In all I documented 7 people for underage drinking and recycled the confiscated bottles. Later that night I had a marijuana bust but that is another story altogether.

Name:

School:

Story

As we were having a sweep during our fire drills a girl was found in her room reading. When I asked her why she was in her room she said she did not know what the noise was for. I instructed her that there was a fire drill and that she needed to evacuate the building. The girl proceeded to go to her closet and decide what she wanted to wear. I instructed her to evacuate immediately but she still did not get it..

Name:

staff

School:

Easten Il University

Story

During my second week as a Resident Assistant, one of the ladies on the floor came to my door. She told me that she had a basket stuck on her finger and it wouldn't come off. I didn't believe her at first, but then I looked down at her finger and sure enough! It was bright purple and swollen. I asked her why she did that and she told me that she was just bored. So, we tried everything to make the swelling go down: water, soap, conditioner, lotion. You name it. We tried it. Well, nothing seemed to be working, so I decided to burn off the rest of the basket (it was plastic), so the force on her finger would lessen. After that was done, there still wasn't much hope of the finger coming out of the basket hole. So, off to the emergency room we went. The nurse at the hospital laughed at the situation and cut the plastic basket with a pair of wire-cutting scissors. Talk about one crazy, unusual experience.

Name:

Perhaps I shouldn't say

School:

San Jose State University

Story

Okay, here goes. Roundabout midway through the semester, I received a noise complaint on the second floor. I went up there, told them all that I was going to write them up for being so noisy at 3am. Stupid me, I write the incident report right after I told them to be quiet. Being that it was 3am I wasn't exactly coherent at this moment either. Anyways, when the girl called me up to complain, she told me she didn't want to be identified in the report. Here's a line taken from my report (before I rewrote it) "Witness *Stephanie* who did not want to be identified called RA at approx. 2:48am and complained of excessive noise in RM 238. Needless to say, I had to rewrite the report.

Name:

Adam

School:

Lewis-Clark State College

Story

One night while one duty I came to a situation that required me and my fellow staff to call the local police. Three police cars were sent out to our location. While standing and talking to four police officers I looked to a parking lot no more than 100 yards away from where we were standing. I could not believe what I saw. The parking lot is used for drivers education so there were a few city traffic cones in it. Although there were four cops and one security guard standing with me a young man was running across the parking lot steeling the traffic cones!!! Needless to say, he didn't get anywhere!

Name:

Jordana

School:

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Story

One night I was on rounds with my duty partner, and we stopped in one suite to talk to some people she knew. While we were standing there, I heard one resident say, "I think I need another beer."