Don’t Drink on Campus, A story from a naïve freshmen

The following is a story from the first month of my freshmen year, I was naïve, ignorant, and just plain a freshmen. At first this seemed like the end of the world, but now I can look back on it and laugh at myself. Learn from my mistake and don’t drink on campus.

College had just begun, I was excited, ignorant, nervous, and loving it…basically a typical freshmen. It had not been more than a month into the first semester, when my good friend hit her 19th birthday. I have known this friend; we will call her Y, since 7th grade. We were really good friends throughout junior high, but drifted apart some in high school. Anyway, we both ended up going to the same university, we both didn’t have many friends, and it was the day of her birthday. I decided to call her up and tell her happy birthday, we got to talking and it turns out she was drinking with her good friend (also from my high school, we will call her X) in their dorm room.

First of all let’s spill some facts:

• They lived in the all girls dorm room on campus, while this can be a good thing, it also tends to be more strict with rules.
• They had been drinking nearly all day, and were pretty trashed, so much so that they could not come to my dorm and we decided to go to theirs.
• I had heard various lectures about drinking on campus, had RA’s actually tell me to just go off campus to do it, but obviously did not listen to them

Okay so at first I suggest X and Y come over to my dorm room to ‘party’ it up, get drunk, etc…They inform me that they are too drunk to walk and that me and my roommate (we shall call Z) have to go over to their dorm room (the all girls one). We agree to this, me and Z start to head over there, not really knowing what we are getting ourselves into.

We get to the front step of their dormitory, I call up X and inform her that me and Z are outside, she then proceeds to walk downstairs and let us inside. When I first see X I can immediately see that she is trashed beyond belief. Me X, and Z walk the three flights of stairs up to Y’s room. I am immediately greeted by Y and her roommate (we will call her Q). So it is me and Z, and three other girls in one room, I look around and immediately see a big bottle of tequila, a big bag of limes, and a can of salt.

After initial greetings are exchanged me and Z decided to take a shot of tequila, they only had two shot glasses, one normal sized and one that is extra large (about the equivalent of two shots). Being the man that I am, I decide to take the large shot glass. We fill up our glasses to the brim, and I prepare for the worst. First I lick the side of my right hand, and then cover the wet part with some salt. I gulp down my shot in one big sip, then immediatly lick the salt off my hand. Next I grab a cut up lime and squeeze it into my mouth. The shot goes down smoothly and no gag reflux is induced because of the lime.

This continues for at least an hour, I keep on taking double shot after double shot..By the end of the hour I have probably taken eight or so. I’m feeling pretty good, definitely getting my krunk on. Q gets two of her friends over, and we aren’t really talking with her or her friends. Q’s friends then decide to take a shot with us, I agree and we take another shot, making the final count to nine. Q and her two friends decide to leave, and it is just X, Y, Z, and me in the dorm room. We decide to play some music, and just start kickin’ it. Q comes back into the room, and then X decides to leave to talk on the phone. Me and Y decide to go and get her laptop so that we can play some better music. We hop down a flight of stairs, go into her room, grab the laptop and come back to X’s room. We plug her laptop into the speakers and proceed to blare some party music. This was our downfall, the loud music past quiet hours in a goody goody all girls dorm.

About ten minutes later someone proceeds to knock on the door. Me being pretty sloshed at that point don’t even look into the peephole to see who it is. I open up the door and low and behold it is the Resident Assistant. She states that we are being kind of loud and need to turn it down, I nod my head and close the door on her face. There really isn’t much of an excuse for that besides the fact that I was pretty drunk. I try to tell Y that it was an RA, but nothing really intelligible comes out of my mouth. *bang* *bang* *bang*, another knock on the door, it is obviously the RA. This is when the shit hits the fan, everything sort of happens really fast but also kind of like slow motion. I open up the door, the RA peeps her head in and looks around. This is when she catches sight of the bottle of Tequila and Vodka. She immediately puts her foot into the door and lets us know that she has seen the alcohol. My roommate, Z tries to make a run for it, he pushes the door open and tries to push aside the RA. After a few good shoves he breaks free and escapes from her. He immediately runs down the hall, past my line of sight. The RA calls the front desk and tells them that they have a runner. She then proceeds to take out a clipboard and wants all of our names. Y gives her real name, phone number, and tells her to call it if she would like. I get the bright idea to give her a fake name, I give her the name of one of my friend in high school as well as a fake number. She can tell that I am obviously lying and tries to call the fake number that I gave her. No one answers and she knows that it is fake. She then informs me that she has to have my real name and number, she asks for my identification. I tell her that I don’t have it on me, another lie. She knows that I’m lying and is obviously not fooled by my tomfoolery. I keep badgering her trying to weasel my way out of this prickly situation. The RA is not buying anything that I am throwing at her. I plead and beg, “please we are not disturbing anyone, can we please go”, she laughs and proceeds to question my identity. Finally, I submit to her authority, I provide her with my name and my phone number. Y gives her my roommates real name and phone number as well. X comes back into the room after talking on the phone for a while, she immediately realizes what is going on. She proceeds to break down in tears.. I tell the RA that I have given her my information and should be allowed to leave. She allows this.

So I am incredibly intoxicated, I just got busted on campus for consuming alcohol, and I feel like shit. I take the long walk back to my dorm, stumbling and nearly about to break down. Right before I get into my dorm room, I remove my name sign on the door. I remember thinking to myself, “they won’t be able to find me if I take this off”…haha what a joke. Next thing I know I’m puking up my dinners green beans into the sink. What a night. Phone calls are exchanged between the culprits, we all decide we are going to play it cool and tell them the truth.

This was already a rough part of my life, having to adjust to college and being without my parents support. I was under a lot of anxiety and this really did not help much at all. I felt incredibly guilty, and was sure I was going to get kicked out of housing. I decided to confess to my parents, almost in tears. They are really nice and tell me that it is alright, we all make mistakes. They give me some reassurance and tell me that it will be alright. Finally the day arrives with a counselor about the incident. He reads me off the report and it mentions my name all throughout it, saying how defiant I was. It really made me sound kind of like a badass. It alos mentions how X broke down into tears, and told the RA that it was all her fault. Anyways I tell the counselor the truth, and make up a semi bullshit lie. I told him that I was drinking to cope with my anxiety, which is semi right in the sense that I had anxiety, but I defiantly wasn’t drinking to cope with it. Anyways he admits that it is brave that I can admit to that, and lets me off the hook scott free. I only am on probation, meaning if in the next year I get caught again I will move to the next warning system.
Y got the worst punishment of them all, she had to attend 4-5 alcohol related courses. In the end I got the least amount of punishment, even though I was the most defiant with the RA. I was so upset when I got caught but now I can look back on this incident and laugh out loud. The moral of the story is not to drink on campus, and if you do don’t be a dumbass.