A Reddit user asked college students and graduates what the “craziest thing” they had ever witnessed in their dorm or residence hall was and some of the strangest stories were revealed.
If you aren’t ready to see some wild antics on your walk home or to fall into a makeshift slip and slide in the middle of the night, maybe perusing higher education just isn’t for you.
A Stolen Christmas Tree
“I had some friends cut down a Christmas tree from campus somewhere and put it up in their dorm room. The only thing is, real Christmas trees are not allowed because they're a crazy fire hazard... They bought one of those things you would put a live plant in (a planter?), some 90 degree brackets, and some screws and screwed the tree down.
Then they built a false top and sprinkled dirt and rocks (again taken from campus) on it to make it look like the tree was planted in dirt. They convinced our RA that they had an uncle who had a tree farm and allowed them to dig up a real tree to use for the year.
My absolute favorite part is that they returned the saw they used to Walmart.”
Story credit: Reddit / @TellemSteve-Dave
No Raccoons Allowed
“I was an RA. I had 8 residents trap a raccoon and bring it into their dorm to "domesticate" it. Guess what happens when you let a raccoon in the dorm? It [messes] stuff up.”
Story credit: Reddit / @StannisIsTheMannis
Jam Session in the Elevator
“Lived in a 21 floor tower, something like 1600 students lived in it. 4 guys decided to have a jam session in an elevator and go up and down the building - had drums, guitar, saxophone, and vocalist. I think every single floor wanted to murder them.”
Story credit: Reddit / @peanutbuttersucks
Homemade Popsicle Surprise
“One guy peed on a cookie sheet and let it freeze outside in winter. He took said frozen sheet of pee and slid it under another guy's door when he wasn't there. All the rooms in that dorm were carpeted.”
Story credit: Reddit / @ironmaven
A Real Walk of Shame
“A guy I knew used to hook up with girls and then throw their clothes into the hall outside his room, then lock them out of his room, making them get dressed in the hall in front of whomever was around.
I think he works for Comcast now, which fits.”
Story credit: Reddit / @greenvilledoc
The Smartest Thing I Did During School
“Boarding school here. Mp3, phones etc. were prohibited, but a few people (including me) still had them. One of them was caught and expelled and all the charging points were covered up. There was 1 uncovered socket left, but it was 18 feet above ground, and was for a big appliance.
The solution we came up with was to steal stuff from the physics lab and make a voltage regulator. Then make 2 stacks of 3 people standing on top of each other. The top 2 guys worked the wires, and got us a connection. One stack went up everyday for almost a week before we were able to get a wire extender with a socket and get a permanent connection. It is still the craziest/most innovative thing that I have personally witnessed.”
Story credit: Reddit / @Dawnseeker11
Igloo is Open for Business
“So last winter in Boston there was about 102'' of snow over the winter. Being college kids, we proceeded to build an igloo on the roof of our dorm and proceeded to hotbox it. Good times.”
Story credit: Reddit / @Slugger767
Cheap Construction Job
“A guy that was wasted went into the wrong room in the middle of the night and was thrown out of said room, across the hall and through the wall into my old room.
Turns out there had been a giant hole there that was cheaply patched up years ago, otherwise there should have been no way he could have gone straight through the wall. It was a cold night, but my roommate and I pushed a dresser up to attempt to cover the hole until someone could fix it. Good times.”
Story credit: Reddit / @JASP3RB3ARDLY
Not Worth It
“My dorm had a Secret Santa thing where your Santa would give you a task to do, and if you completed it, you'd get a gift. In the packed dining hall one night shortly before Christmas break, a huge, hairy, completely naked man jumps onto a table, tucks his junk between his legs, and screams "daddy only likes me when I'm a little girl!"
My roommate was his Santa, and as a reward for completing the task, she gave him a teddy bear wearing overalls.”
Story credit: Reddit / @Pendrell_Crush
Day Trading Nightmare
“Guy down the hall was just nasty. Smelled bad, slovenly, but very friendly. He never went to class. You might be thinking "gamer", but nope - he was a day trader. Always told us about his wins/losses for that day. Anyway, this was before mobile devices, and he hardly ever left his computer as a result. Traded in movements of pennies.
So he had milk jugs to pee in. He told us proudly about how much time he saved by peeing in milk jugs. I presumed he'd dump them out routinely, but the first time I caught sight of his room I learned the truth. It was as messy as you'd imagine, but then I saw the jugs. All over his room. The floor, windowsill, computer desk. My memory is hazy by now, but I'd say he had at least 20 1-gallon milk jugs full of pee in his room.
To be fair I couldn't verify that they were all actually full or just waiting in reserve, but at a glance at least some of them were clearly topped off. And honestly, how many gallons of pee is really acceptable to keep in your room?”
Story credit: Reddit / @TheTomatoThief
Waiting Room
“We had a guy who's room was at the end of the hall so it had a little extra space next to his door. A little alcove. We had tour groups come through our dorm with prospective students and their families. Well on one of those days he tore out a bunch of pics from his playboys and posted them all over his door and on the walls outside his room. He took 3 chairs from the common room and put them outside his room as well. He then had a sign that said "The Hoes Waiting Room". A mother went absolutely ballistic when she saw that. He got into deep [trouble] for it too.”
Story credit: Reddit / @RiemsMUFC
Untie Me!
“A few months later when another tour group came through, our RA Bill, was giving kind of a speech to the high schoolers and their families. So our buddy "fell" out of his room in just his boxers and his hands tied behind his back with a sock in his mouth. He spit the sock out and started yelling "BILL! UNTIE ME! THIS ISN'T FUNNY!!!" Our RA was humiliated, the parents went absolutely nuts over it.
Our buddy was kicked out later that day.”
Story credit: Reddit / @RiemsMUFC
Going For a Swim
“The en-suite bathrooms in our building had the kind of showers with a tile platform encased in a plexiglas box with a plexiglas door. Your usual non-tub shower.
We had a kid that shot a video class project in his bathroom. He sealed himself inside the shower with the camera running. Caulked all cracks in the shower shut. Turned on the water.
Downstairs neighbors from the kid lived on my floor and came to me hollering about water running down their wall. I went upstairs and found water pouring out of this kid's unit into the hallway. We had a loft-style building with concrete floors, so it was running everywhere.
Entered the unit and found the kid in swim trunks standing in front of a pile of plexiglas with water flooding the entire unit. He had managed to fill the shower about waist deep until the plexiglas popped out of the frame and flooded everything.
Water leaked between the walls and the floors down 3 stories of the building. He was asked to move off-campus.
The video was amazing.”
Story credit: Reddit / [deleted]
Basement Dweller
“We found a 50+ year old man in diabetic shock in the basement once. He didn't live here, we had no idea why he was even in the building, let alone the basement.”
Story credit: Reddit / @Hero_of_Brandon
Unwilling Slip-N-Slide
“Three gallons of vegetable oil, all up and down the tile hallway. We had a few unfortunate guys who ended up playing unwilling drunken slip-n-slide during the 2 hour cleanup event.”
Story credit: Reddit / @JiaMekare
Stolen Police Parking Boots
“I had a resident on a hall who had a penchant for stealing police parking boots. Not just campus police ones, but from the city as well. We went into his room to do winter closing, and found 20 or 25 of them in there. I never learned why. I like to think that he was some sort of parking boot Robin Hood, who saved people from that "my car is booted" moment.”
Story credit: Reddit / @thathammer
Get Out of the Tree!
“I was an RA for 1 year. I walked outside one a nice September night. A lot of people were outside with open alcohol (which I could write people up for, but frankly i really did not [care]).
As I am walking around i begin to notice one of the trees is swaying and upon closer inspection it turns out a drunk kid has climbed about half way up a tree. The tree was about 20 feet tall I think. So he was close to about 10 feet.
I yelled up to him to "get out of the tree". He drunkenly responded that he would come down. He proceeded to fall his way out of the tree onto his back. He was fine and after a minute walked it off. He was lucky he landed on his back and did not sustain any injuries, however I suspect the next day he was feeling rather sore.”
Story credit: Reddit / @MrChaoticfist
Custom Nerf Gun Fights
“The time one of the engineers dented a wall by firing a custom Nerf gun he'd built down the length of the hall.”
Story credit: Reddit / @Zemalac
Where Did that Sink Come From?
“One day I woke up to a sink sitting in the hallway. Like a sink that is built into a counter top or something. Someone must have just ripped a sink out of a counter top, from a different building, and put it in the hallway...on the fourth floor.”
Story credit: Reddit / @Smalls_Biggie
A Brilliant Head Butt
“I was a sophomore at University of Iowa, on the engineering dorm. The problem was that the main cafeteria of the campus was downstairs, so drunk people would get confused and wander to it even though it was closed, then start having fun on other floors.
It was Saturday night and pretty miserable outside so most people were staying in, when we heard a scream, then a loud crack. When we checked on it, there was nobody in the hallway. There was, however, a large smear of blood along the wall, and the exit sign was broken.
One of the guys decided to investigate and found a huge guy in the bathroom, bleeding from the face and drunk. Turns out he had the brilliant idea of running down the hallway, leaping into the air, and headbutting the exit sign.”
Story credit: Reddit / @TheBrianJ
Hatching Quails
“One time, my roommate and I hatched quails in our dorm room.
We started out with growing plants, then breeding beta fish, and from there we kind of escalated to birds. Ordered a cheap incubator and the eggs online, and kept it in the corner of our room without having any real hope that any of them would hatch.
Three of them did... somehow... and they lived in our dorm room for a whole year without the RA finding out. Helps that they only grow to be about three inches tall.”
Story credit: Reddit / @spoodr
This RA Has Seen Some Stuff
“RA here. Seen some [stuff], but the worst was when I was a freshman - I had this roommate, Mike. Came from money, parents bought him a decently nice car at 16, he modified it, he thought he was [cool] and he could do anything he wanted.
One night, Mike decides he's gonna get very drunk, maybe take some pills. At some point during the night, for a reason we still don't know, he decided he did not like the plate glass window in the hallway of our dorm, so he dropped his shoulder and plowed into it. Spiderwebbed the entire thing. At some point later that night, he wanted to talk to some people we knew on a balcony down the hall. Instead of walking down the hall and into their room, he opened a window and head-butted the screen out so he could lean out and yell at them.
At some point later in the night he did cocaine and I woke up to a bunch of my stuff duct-taped to the wall of our room.”
Story credit: Reddit / @Cellifal
Fire Alarm Mystery
“I lived on the 5th floor of a monstrous 6-story building. One night in February, the fire alarms went off at like 2am and the building was evacuated. No fire, no nothing. We all went back inside. The next Tuesday, the alarms went off at the same time. This time someone had taken out the fire extinguishers and thrown them from the top of the stairwells where they exploded when reaching the ground. Obviously, you can't use elevators in a fire situation and the stairwells were a disaster. It wasn't so much fun running through that.
This type of thing then happened every Tuesday night for at least a month. They eventually caught the people when they tried to hit two dorms back-to-back.”
Story credit: Reddit / @elevenghosts
Total Control of the Thermostat
“When my now-husband was in college, the thermostat to the whole building was in his room. He discovered he could make the fire alarm go off simply by moving it one degree up. So he made the alarm go off at 2 a.m. He did this three times.”
Story credit: Reddit / @JaneHSV
The RA Threw a Rager
“One of the RAs got fired... I can't remember why. He had a week to move out of his dorm room, and it coincided with Mother's weekend. Lots of moms visiting campus. He decided to get a keg and invite a bunch of people over as a [good riddance] to his bosses. His room was larger than most, since he was an RA. When they broke up the party the people stumbling out were frat bros and drunk moms, and a couple of grandmothers.”
Story credit: Reddit / @poopnado2