There I was, just a typical Friday night, laying awake in my dorm room at 2 a.m. Why was I awake? Just the usual Friday night drinking crew making as much noise as humanly possible. I heard a loud noise from someone running down my hallway screaming, "OH MY GOD. YOU HAVE A HICKEY?!" It was at this moment that they stopped right outside my door, bursting into a fit of giggles and screeches.
Normal college behavior? When you're drunk in someone's apartment or at a fraternity, I suppose. When you're in a college dorm? Hell no.
There are two types of dorm drinkers. The first kind of dorm drinkers are the people you don't even notice. They are the people who sit in their room, play music and don't disrupt the public areas of a college dorm.
Then there's the second kind of dorm drinkers. They are the people who scream, play loud music, and make it blatantly obvious that they've been drinking.
There are a plethora of different obstacles in people's way when they plan on pre-gaming in the residence halls. The first, and foremost, is the RAs. If you are loud and have alcohol in your room, you're going to get caught. Plain and simple.
Another obstacle, though not always at the forefront of your mind, is your peers. We're all in this college thing together, right? No, not when people are trying to sleep and there's a rager in the room next door.
The Residence Hall Association gave the students at Mizzou who live in the residence halls an "on call number." Each night after 11 p.m. when quiet hours begin, students have the opportunity to call the on call number, which reaches the RA on call for the evening. Students can anonymously report any incidents of safety issues or quiet hour breaches.
Dorm drinking is hard to control, especially because there are basically no consequences besides a written up incident report. According to the Tiger Guide, the rule and regulation guide for living in the residence halls at Mizzou, when a student violates a Residential Life policy they are subject to warnings, loss of privileges, restitution (compensation for damages) and relocation, probation, suspension, dismissal and expulsion from the residence halls and in extreme cases, from the University. From what I have seen, people don't get written up when they are drinking quietly in their room. They get written up when they are screaming and being loud and basically proclaiming, "Hey RA's! I'm dorm drinking! Come write me up!"
Dorm drinking is never going to stop and all students have accepted that as a fact. It's not that students have a problem with other students drinking in the dorms, it's a problem with drunk students making noise and disturbing the peace of the community living.
So if you're going to dorm drink, please, do it in your room for the sake of everyone else and for your own sake of not being caught. Some of us like to sleep and study at 2 a.m.
