Dorm Horrors

Okay, so, this is... not really a subculture, but whatever, guys, I couldn't think of anywhere else to put this.

Anyway, a lot of us are in college or have been to college or university or what-have-you. I'm in my second semester right now, and I love it. However, freshman who go to this school are required to live on campus in a freshman dorm unless they have special reasons for commuting to campus. This... I do not love it so much as I love classes and my new friends.

I bring this thread to you after being awakened at ten a.m. to the unholy shriek of my fire alarm. This is, of course, a rather common occurrence in dorms, but this is not the first time it's happened in my dorm. In fact, this is the third time in twenty-four hours that the fire alarm has gone off.

An hour before the fire alarm catapulted me out of bed, I got to listen to two very accented southern repairmen loudly speak into walkie talkies right outside my door. Goddammit. Just when I roll back over to go to sleep, I get chased down the hall by what sounds like the screeching bats of hell.

My first week in this dorm, someone pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall at four in the morning and sent us all out into the night waiting for the fire trucks to come investigate. As a result, we got our television in the lobby taken away, our pool table and ping pong table revoked, and the table and chairs in the kitchen stashed away. Not SO bad, but there's more.

There is a guy on the boys' part of the hall - where, I'll admit, I spend a majority of my time, as most of my friends are guys - who regularly gets drunk and at obscene hours of the night will go down the hall singings songs about macaroni and cheese. No, I'm not joking. He also punches holes in the wall. Just... rears back and punches holes in the wall at his whimsy. He's been kicked out once, and for some reason let back in. I came back from Thanksgiving break, and someone had managed to Hulkishly rip a bulletin board off the wall, leaving a huge gaping maw in its place. Why is this such a big deal? The bulletin boards are BOLTED TO THE WALL. BOLTED. And it was bodily ripped from its bed there. Also, an Exit sign was dangling from its wires, and there were three holes punched in the ceiling, and the back entrance door? Well, forget using your key card, if you just pulled it the right way, it would brokenly swing open at anyone's behest.

But wait - there's more!

My good friend, a sophomore this year, told me about the funniest/most disgusting thing I've heard yet. For some background info, in my dorms we have little study rooms. In my dorm, they have windows. In the dorm my friend stayed in, they had these study rooms, but the doors had no windows. They were like little closets. Apparently, they had to have a hall meeting once a week because on the same day every week, in the same study room, someone would take a shit on the floor and just leave. They offered rewards and incentives for turning in this shit-and-run criminal, but the culprit was never found. A good friend of mine lives right across the hall from the shitting room this year, in fact.

I'll offer up more stories if this thread takes off, because I'm not out of them yet. Nope, not quite.

Anyone?

InkWeaver wrote:

this shit-and-run criminal.

I just lost it here and started laughing uncontrollably.

I managed to win a scholarship from a college pretty close to home, and as part of it I have to live on campus for the time being. Fair enough. Unfortunately, I got stuck in a dorm that is one-third drunk, one-third international students who mostly keep to themselves, and one-third ungodly creepy. Some of the worst offenders:

The Creed Crew: There are only two Creed superfans left on Earth, and they both lived two doors down. Spent the first two weeks of the semester blasting the same three Creed songs on their stereo loud enough to hear from the alternate universe where they were the only people who didn't like Creed; later expanded their tastes to include Rush and "Come Sail Away". Were drunk most of the time; the Creedier of the Crew "got the shit beat out of him for resisting a cop" for a speeding violation last semester, and hasn't returned for this one.

Hurf and Durf: As if in immediate response to the Creed Crew, two Canadian kids moved in down the hall and decided to do nothing but play horrible techno really, really loud. Durf looks like a golden retriever.

Whistling Sonichu Guy: Imagine a really lanky, blond CWC who walked like a hunchback and whistled all the time. He had Chris-chan's voice, too. Last semester, he dowsed every nearby surface in Purell (and rubbed it in with his forearm) - this semester I saw him making a burger at the dining hall right on the counter, a stack of plates not more than three feet away. You draw your own conclusions.

Ostrich-Dude: Lumpy, awkward Jewish guy who really does have the eyes of a really sad ostrich. Always wears a wifebeater which proudly shows off his forest of back hair, and is likely responsible for the giant clumps that pile up in the bathroom. I swear, some days it's like a tribble exploded or something.

There are more weird kids at my college, but those are the main ones on my floor. I'll post the rest of the stories later.

My friend was the only one of us to live in the decrepit, badly "cleaned" dorms available at UNR and she rage-quit after only one semester. Her dorm-mate was a slightly frazzled looking, frizzy haired, coke-bottle glasses wearing nympho who gave my somewhat reserved and private friend a copy of an explicit yaoi manga as a birthday gift because she, "liked those animes and things".
The day I met her, she complained about "being too hot" and started stripping in front of both of us. Not undressing. Stripping.

During October of my sophomore year in undergrad, there was a late-night capture-the-flag game on the quad. The winners went back to their room, and thought they would display the flag. So they proudly stuck it in the sprinkler. Realizing their mistake, they tried to pull it out.

Therefore, @ 2 am, I was awakened by the fire alarm. I go into the hall, and with the fire alarm going, the lights go out and it's more like a strobe-lighting effect. I take a few steps down the hall and see a nice big puddle of blackish water - I had the room down the hall from these guys (co-ed wings in the dorm), and their room had already majorly flooded.

By the time they got the alarm off, the south wing of the third floor was flooded in several inches of water, and the two floors below also had flood damage. The room where it all began was uninhabitable for months.

We were not allowed back into the dorm until 7am - most of us had spent the time trying to steal catnaps in the public affairs building (there was only one dorm on campus @ the time for underclassmen - upperclassmen & some grad students lived in townhouses and apartments on campus). Even then, no one was allowed to enter the south wings of the dorm until about 8:30.

These same guys were involved in an earlier incident in which a large, decorative cement ball (like the ones Target has outside their stores) was smuggled into the dorm. They then proceeded to break it. I'm not sure how they broke it, only that the noise and vibrations were rather intense.


Those guys were the worst. Sure, there were the people who had BB gun fights in the second floor south wing, but as long as you kept out of the hall when they did so, things were fine. Occasional accidents meant wall damage now and again, but wall damage that was easily reparable.

I will say our smoke detectors/fire alarm system in the dorm was too twitchy. Steam from a hot shower coming out of your bathroom door? Burnt popcorn? FIRE DRILL!

I'm going to University in a few months and all of my choices are outside the city where I live, so it's 100% that I'll be living in a dorm. Reading thse kinds of threads [especially the 'Horror Roommate' thread on Something Awful [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] ] is the worst thing I could possibly do as nightmare fuel but I just love them so much.

Zeiss Manifold wrote:

The Creed Crew: There are only two Creed superfans left on Earth, and they both lived two doors down.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] I sympathise with you strongly.

365th TRS dorms, Sheppard AFB. Thread over.

Explanation? All righty then. My instructor lived there when he started out, and he said it should've been condemned then.

Ever-present black mold. A whole floor of the dorm on one side was closed off for this, and it frequently appeared in other parts of the dorm. The community area was closed for the better part of a month for that.

Asbestos. Said communal area was closed again shortly afterward when asbestos tiles were found, because it used to be the squadron dining facility.

The communal, semi-functioning showers that had hot or cold water but rarely both, and frequently backed up to a soupy mix of suds, dirty water and hair. There were 4 of these shower-latrines on each floor, but at least one was closed for renovation, and the others frequently had to share out 1-2 functioning shower heads between dozens of airmen.

The complete lack of climate control outside a few privileged offices in the Texas weather. Oh sure, every room had a heater/air conditioner unit like you find in old hotels. At best, they made noise and blew room temperature air at you, and in 40-degree spring nights or 110-degree summer days, it was fucking miserable. There were always work orders being turned in to get them fixed, but whenever they were "fixed" it was usually because the fan motor was dead and that was replaced. That was if the contractors could even be bothered. It continued to be a noisemaker after being "fixed" until it inevitably burned out again.

Oh, and the fact that since it was gender segregated, a sock on someone's door meant they were jerking off. Desperation, loneliness and shame easier to see than a post on Love-shy.com. (The gender ratio was about the same anyway).

The broken-ass fire alarm that went off all the time. This seems to be an obligatory problem for any building calling itself a "dorm," but this one was no exception, and I never had that problem at Keesler.

The inspections. YES I SURE LOVE STANDING OUT IN THE HALLWAY WHEN IT'S 110 DEGREES IN MY SERVICE DRESS BLUES WAITING ON AN INSPECTION THAT WILL NEVER COME. OH WAIT IT'S CURFEW NOW AND I'VE BEEN STANDING HERE SINCE I GOT BACK FROM CLASS, DINNER CAN GO SCREW ITSELF AND MY EXPENSIVE DRY CLEAN-ONLY SUIT IS ALL SWEATY GEE THANKS.

Oh, and the drunks. I was one of those. Sorry guys. At least I was a quiet drunk.

Honestly, that place was such an utter craphole that the spate of alcohol-related incidents, MIPs and underage drinking arrests that plagued the base shouldn't have been a mystery to anyone. Sheppard AFB has less to do with air education and training than it does with inflicting, nurturing, and inflaming mental health issues in new airmen.

Mafiosa wrote:

My friend was the only one of us to live in the decrepit, badly "cleaned" dorms available at UNR and she rage-quit after only one semester.

Manzanita, Nye or White Pine? I lived in Nye for a week one summer and I think I would have had a better week living in a prison.

Spotts1701 wrote:

Mafiosa wrote:

My friend was the only one of us to live in the decrepit, badly "cleaned" dorms available at UNR and she rage-quit after only one semester.

Manzanita, Nye or White Pine? I lived in Nye for a week one summer and I think I would have had a better week living in a prison.

Nye, god isn't it horrible?

...I was one of those awful, terrible people who would blast horrible music at all hours of the night. Horrible music. Bananaphone. The Lucky Star theme. Tunak Tunak Tun. Dragostea din Tei. If it was annoying, I loved it.

EDIT: I should probably add that I didn't do it for the specific purpose of being a bitch. I liked my music loud, and the music I enjoy happens to be the auditory bane of humanity.

Dorm horrors? Well, I painted a picture and hung it outside my dorm room. Some drunk guy drew a dick on it. Then again, that's probably to be expected, and I probably deserved it for playing Caramelldansen on loop for two hours. Still as asshole thing to do to someone's artwork. Luckily, I was able to retouch the painting.

Come to think of it, aside from the usual drunk people running up and down the hall acting like fools, I think the worst thing that happened in my particular dorm were the ladybug invasions in the middle of November. Seriously, hundreds (if not thousands) of ladybugs. All swarming into your dorm. They would swarm into the stairwells, and pile up on the windowpanes, on the steps themselves, on the floors...the worse was when they got into the light fixtures, and would fly around trying to escape, and you'd hear the "tink, tink, tink" of them running into the glass all night long. I like ladybugs, but not that much. On the other hand, it could have been beetles, or gnats, or flies, in which case I would have had to bomb my room on a daily basis.

Even the Freshman dorm on my campus was strangely devoid of well-known horrors. The only one I heard about was when there was a minor fire in the dorm, and the sprinklers went off, and a bunch of peoples' computers got ruined, along with clothes, pictures, textbooks, homework, etc. This somehow happened twice in the same semester. Glad I didn't ever have to live there.

...I went to a tiny, tiny college as an undergrad.

I've lived in a dorm since August and so many wonderful things have happened.

We have gotten gas leak scares from construction on a new building. 
Some water pipes burst, causing several rooms to be flooded. 
We had no hot water for over a week and no heat during the coldest week of the year. 
The elevators constantly break, which makes living on the seventh floor such a blast. 
My roommates have somehow managed to block the sink three times, in a place where it takes a good 4-5 days for maintenence to check things out.
Every TV in the entire building is somehow broken. 
Drunk people run up and down the hall every day at about 2 AM. 
My roommates decided to have a party, which resulted in a pizza exploding in the microwave and somehow making it to the walls, grape gin everywhere, a couch with vomit all over it, and the smell of body odor lingering for about two days.  (That, and two of the guys decided to smoke weed in the bathroom, adding to the lovely smell.)

On the plus side, I ended up with very normal and down to earth roommates, partying aside.  That, and I've heard rumors of one of the rooms on a different floor having a stripper pole in it.  Ahh, college.

Well, congratulations, guys. I WAS going to go away to college this September, but you've convinced me to stay in my parents' basement forever. You have turned me into the next Chris-Chan. I hope you're happy.

Oh no, you should go to college. Just never go to Wichita Falls, TX for any reason whatsoever.

Delcat wrote:

Well, congratulations, guys. I WAS going to go away to college this September, but you've convinced me to stay in my parents' basement forever. You have turned me into the next Chris-Chan. I hope you're happy.

Go to college.

Rent an apartment.

Penguin wrote:

(Horrors of Texas)

Yeah, I was considering the Air Force....thanks for putting me in the Navy camp.

...

I like living in the dorms. Mostly. Only when I have a single room because I have had fucking horrible experiences with roommates. But my neighbors have been pretty good for the most part.

Lapin wrote:

Penguin wrote:

(Horrors of Texas)

Yeah, I was considering the Air Force....thanks for putting me in the Navy camp.

WHAT HAVE I DONE

Seriously, the Air Force is great as long as you never go to Sheppard.

I managed to get my own room, because I have a laundry list of mental health issues, so at least I've never had to deal with roommate horrors. And honestly, the dorms hereabouts are pretty clean: there was a mold problem after the flood, but considering that half the town was practically annihilated, mold isn't much to worry about.

No, most of my dorm problems are associated with people. Mainly get-off-my-lawn stuff: idiots playing Guitar Hero right below me at 3:00 AM on a school night, loud parties during quiet hours, the vents which pick up any smell from the basement kitchen and carry it through the whole building (baking cookies? Yay! Kimchi? Not so much). One major problem, however, is the spiders.

They're not poisonous, as far as I can tell. But they're big. Fat and juicy, with bulging abdomens and legs longer than a runway model's. You stomp one of these bastards, you get a horrible squish-crack-pop noise that will put you off dinner forever. In the Armstrong-Douglas dorm, which is all freshmen, the spiders are a positive plague: there was one the size of Tom Cruise's ego on the side entrance window for ages, just hanging out and enjoying scaring the piss out of anybody who happened to make eye contact. I think winter finally did for it. Or I hope so, anyway. It's probably just moved underground and is plotting its return.

The odd thing is, I'm not technically arachnophobic. My major fear in life is needles, not spiders; I actually kept tarantulas for a while. But these spiders are so big, and so all-pervasive, that you start to wonder if there's some kind of sinister motive behind their presence. If the college turned out to be built over an Umbrella Corporation site or something, I wouldn't be surprised.

Penguin wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Penguin wrote:

(Horrors of Texas)

Yeah, I was considering the Air Force....thanks for putting me in the Navy camp.

WHAT HAVE I DONE

Seriously, the Air Force is great as long as you never go to Sheppard.

No worries, my grandfather would die of shame if I ever joined the Air Force, considering he was a Navy officer. The Air Force just seemed like a "I'm so scared of the fucking ocean" option. Because I'm scared of being on boats and of being in the ocean.

As Mafiosa said, UNR has Nye "Hall" (Read: Prison).

UNLV (where I did my undergrad) has Tonopah Hall - a nice dormitory...if one is a mental patient.

The predominant color was white - white walls, white linoleum floors, white solid-core doors. The only color was the single stripe of either red or blue that was at about waist height.

Now, the building was over 30 years old when I moved into it back in the late 90s. So the first thing we were told was "no appliances". Not just "no hot plates" or "no electric griddles". No appliances at all - coffee pots, microwaves, toasters were all forbidden.

So 200 people had to share one microwave on the 1st floor. Also, we had to share a grand total of 10 washer and dryer sets (which had a tendency to break every week, leading to shuffling a load of wet laundry down 2 flights to find a working dryer).

The elevators were modern when LBJ was President, so by the Clinton years they were prone to breaking (either by mechanical failure or by idiots deliberately overloading them or jumping up and down in them). So most days it was up 5 flights of stairs to the 6th floor, then back down, then up, etc.

Add to this a central heating/air system that basically meant you roasted in the winter and froze in the summer.

Then there were the people. The guys blasting heavy metal on the 2nd floor that would rattle my desk on the 6th, the one who set off the fire extinguisher and sprayed fire-foam all over the lobby, the one who thought yanking the fire alarm 4 times in one night was somehow funny, the ones who would use the lounges and stairwells as their own personal restrooms (most people who used the lounges to study sat on the floor in the center of the room because the couches would probably glow under a blacklight) - we had the whole cavalcade.

And yet compared to what happened in South Complex (which was the mandatory Freshman dorm), it was a somewhat decent place to live.

The horror stories I've heard about here are limited to someone who thought it was funny to poop in the elevator once a week. Other than that, it's just your normal drunken dumbassery.

Theaphelia wrote:

...I was one of those awful, terrible people who would blast horrible music at all hours of the night. Horrible music. Bananaphone. The Lucky Star theme. Tunak Tunak Tun. Dragostea din Tei. If it was annoying, I loved it.

Wear headphones!

Also, in general, don't go vacuuming floors and sanding floors after midnight! Perhaps take off your high heels if you want to stomp around in your room after 2.00 AM, because you have wooden floors and there are people sleeping in the room below yours!
Look, I don't really care about parties or about people roaming about at all hours of the night: after all, it was a student-flat, located next to a fairly crowded parkway. But when things start getting through my ear-plugs and threatening the sleep I hold so very dear, yes, I start getting very cranky and sooner rather than later, I might have to stoop to not saying 'hello' to you in the elevator. Grrr.

I think I was lucky. One advantage of being a 16 year old freshman was that they couldn't force me to live on campus at the college I went to. (The three mile walk to and from classes wasn't fun, but at least I got my exercise.) Seriously, where on the dorm lease does it grant the right to be a complete and utter asshole? I mean, I liked "Animal House" but I wouldn't have wanted to live in ΔTX House. That said, the guys in these stories are making those guys look like Rhodes Scholars.

My apologies for the bad segue, but...

Friend of mine had the choice of two private colleges to attend. One allows alcohol on campus and the other is dry. She chose the one that allows alcohol. Three years in, she's finally regretting her choice because the party girls and boys are making it difficult to impossible to study and/or get any creative work (art major) done in the dorms. But she won't change schools because she'd have to admit that her parents were right about the problems she would be facing. *sigh*

Delcat wrote:

Well, congratulations, guys. I WAS going to go away to college this September, but you've convinced me to stay in my parents' basement forever. You have turned me into the next Chris-Chan. I hope you're happy.

Yeah, the stories are making me a little concerned about what I might have to deal with in grad student housing should I get accepted. I didn't have to live on campus as an undergrad or MA (yay for persistent medical problems keeping me local), but I heard plenty of stories from friends, and I know I'm going to have to live in a dorm wherever I end up next. Here's hoping that grad students are slightly less batshit than undergrads.