Dormitory Life

Dormitory Life


Yesterday I drove to Chattanooga to visit my son. We are apartment hunting for the next school year. Dorm life has just about worn him out, and I understand his feelings. A college dorm is a bizarre place that no person can understand unless he or she has lived in one for a year. Although I didn’t participate in the shenanigans, I remember the laughs that some residents brought and the “ughs” others caused.
Dorm residents are not allowed to use any alcoholic beverages. Sure! Large buildings that house hundreds of people in their late teens and early twenties never would use alcohol in their dorm rooms. When I was a freshman in college, the legal drinking age was eighteen. The Vietnam War was still raging, and government officials decided that a boy who is old enough to die for his country was old enough to drink a beer. The government didn’t see the actions of some of the young men housed in dorms. Floor parties used to include several different drinking games. One was shooting beers. I never understood the physics of the act, but somehow these guys could down a brew in about a second and a half. Others drank red eyes. Those are beers mixed with tomato juice. The thought of the drink upsets my stomach, and I know that the concoction wasn’t that good because too many guys found keeping the stuff inside them to be impossible.
Marijuana was also something that college kids were warned against using. However, on any given night, the pungent smell of burning cannabis filled the hallways. Dorm officials turned sleuths moved furtively as they tracked the origin of the odor. Passkey toting head residents completed unlocking doors of the smokers in an instant. Those who had been “busted” always looked amazed that they had been discovered. The violators never realized that the overpowering smell of weed, combined with psychedelic music reverberating in the halls constructed of concrete block and tile floors gave the housing authorities plenty of clues as to where the illegal acts were occurring.
During the years before modern enlightenment (pre-1980’s or later), the sexes were kept as far away from each other as possible. At the college that I attended, males were housed on the opposite end of the campus from the women. Once each term dormitories opened their doors for visits from the opposite sex. Guests sat in chairs, not on beds. A standard issue garbage can was placed between the door and its frame during the entire visit. The special occasion lasted for two hours, and then the college went back to complete intolerance for mingling of the sexes.
Dorm residents brought with them from home an array of appliances to make life more comfortable. Hot plates were forbidden, but several students brought them anyway. Popcorn poppers accomplished the same things as the hotplates, and just like today’s college students, we rarely cleaned up dishes or utensils until they were covered with a disgusting coat of grunge. Many of us rented small refrigerators from the housing department. In it we kept drinks, bologna, cheese, and other life-sustaining foodstuffs. What our rooms didn’t have were PC’s, DVD players, or chargers for cell phones. Some of us had a record player with a couple of speakers or an eight-track tape player. Only the most expensive rooms had phones and air conditioning.
Now we’re moving our son from the dorms at his college. The cost of his dorm room was equal to a nice apartment, and if he moves into a single person dwelling, he doesn’t have to share a bathroom, kitchen, and living area with three other roommates. Too, the housing authority forced students to sign twelve-month leases, so Dallas spent the summer at school to get the most for our money. Many students moved home and only occasionally returned to their rooms over the summer. If he had to stay at school year round, he at least should have had a place that was more private.
Both my children had their dorm experiences, and then they moved into private settings. I don’t begrudge the privacy of those apartments because the future brings more people with whom to live, and these folks are the ones that they love, that they call family. The little ones who might be a part the household will make dorm life seem normal.