Tonight, UCONN will play for the national title in men’s college basketball. Tonight, Derek the RA also doesn’t want any of your school spirit, laundry-cheering UCONN student:
https://twitter.com/mikemancini/status/453227760132308992/
My initial reactions were two-fold:
- Derek the RA is an asshole and now I actually have the lesser of two evils picked between Kentucky and UCONN now because screw Derek.
- I hope his entire floor only remains silent to stealth-drop loads upon loads of UCONN-branded laundry at his door.
But then some more reactions came in from the Twitter-verse. Yes, Derek is a killjoy, but all RAs are like that. After all that’s why all students eventually move off-campus or to their frat/sorority house to avoid the headache.
Well, this Domer feels sad that your on-campus experience sucked. It’s another example of the “wait, football players have to stay on campus for three years in normal dorms?!” kind of thinking that people can’t wrap their minds around. Notre Dame’s dorm life is truly unique and, for the most part, our RAs pretty much kick ass.
Oh sure, the whole hall staff had to keep everyone in line. Yes, I got busted once for breaking the sacred rules of DuLac (consuming hard liquor on campus). However, I also “got away” with so much that it’s laughable to think that I would ever see an email from an RA telling me to shut up during the biggest game of the season. In fact, I’d be more surprised if that RA wasn’t sneaking away from rounds to grab a beer and sit down and watch the game for a bit.
For more proof of ND hall staff awesomeness, I’d like to present to you the greatest prank that I’ve ever seen pulled off. This happened when I was a freshman Otter (for non-ND folk, our dorms have mascots and we compete against other dorms in our version of intramural sports called “interhall”) in Sorin College (we do not call it Sorin Hall because the dorm seceded from the University in protest during the Vietnam War) over Easter Break.
One of our ARs (short for assistant rector, usually a grad student, that is above the RA in power but below the rector of the dorm) decided to prank one of our RAs. You see, this RA had a pretty great scheme going with his Netflix membership. In this time before better anti-copying technology, this guy would get DVDs from Netflix, and burn a copy to keep. He’d then send his DVD back and repeat the process of building an impressive pirated DVD collection for a low monthly fee.
Well this AR, who also happened to be a law student, decided to create a fake cease and desist summons which included the threat of legal action for piracy from Netflix. Being a law student, he had no trouble with the legal language behind it; however, he went several steps further and somehow found Netflix’s legal letterhead online (mind, you this was over a decade ago, so this took some work) complete with the name of Netflix’s legal council and signature. He fired up word and dropped the letterhead and signature in the document, dropped it in the RA’s mailbox (I think he made the envelope look like it was from Netflix as well) and then sat back and watched the hilarity.
When the RA received the letter, he understandably shat a brick. His second reaction: destroy all the evidence. So he went into his room and destroyed hundreds of pirated DVDs. Years worth of gaming the system gone in a matter of minutes.
The next step was to call his parents and confess his crime so he could figure out what to do next should the Netflix hammer of justice come down. Around the time our rector caught wind that the next step was hiring legal council for his defense, he made the AR go tell him it was all a joke as it was quickly going too far.
Other favorite stories include an RA stumbling upon a baby oil party. Yes, a baby oil party. These guys put down tarps in their room, invited over some girls and all in attendance were drinking and sliding around in the baby oil pool in boxers/underwear/bathing suits. An RA investigated the strange noise, saw what happened and closed the door. Everyone in attendance was convinced they were screwed until the RA returned with a camera, told them to keep the party going and took pictures of the hilarity. At the end of the year, our rector (who is a priest, by the way) gave away “awards” at the end of the year and presented that room with a gigantic bottle of baby oil.
Little did we know at the time, this same rector secretly started authoring a book about dorm life in Notre Dame using all of us and the crazy shit that we did as his material. It has an official title, but it is better called I Know Everything You Did and I Wrote a Book About It. It is a great read too, especially knowing who all the stories are actually about since he changed names to protect the not-so-innocent.
So, UCONN, while your hall staff is trying to shut you up hours before a basketball game, realize that my hall staff was sending fake legal lawsuits to each other, encouraging debauchery (as long as it didn’t really get too far out of hand), and writing books about it all in secret.
- Epilogue - January 3, 2022
- HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
- The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021
WhiskyPoet
I’m pretty sure Bayou fired that AR after the incident, yes?
Publius
Walsh chicks suck