Readers share their wildest college dorm room stories

By Annie Jonas

Labor Day marks the start of school for many colleges in Boston, and with 160,000 college students enrolled in Boston-area colleges, that means the city will soon be flooded with students.

For incoming freshmen, starting college often means leaving behind the comforts of your childhood home and moving into a dormitory, which can be an exciting, foreign, and nerve-wracking experience all wrapped into one.

Dorm life has become a quintessential part of the college experience as students develop lasting friendships and embark on their academic and career pursuits.

For some, it’s also a time to unleash their inner wild child, free from the watchful eyes of parents.

Take it from Boston.com readers who, when asked about their wildest college dorm room stories, had plenty to share: They told us about awful roommates, about streaking through campus, and even a dorm room turned deli.

Among the mishaps were heartwarming stories about meeting future spouses, befriending bunkmates, and pulling pranks on classmates.

Forty-one percent of the 27 readers who responded said they loved their dorm room experience, followed by 37% of readers who said they had a love-hate relationship with it. 22% said they hated their dorm room experience.

See the wildest stories readers had to share about their college dorm room experiences.

Some responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

“The boys from the floor below us flooded the girls floor by sticking their underwear in all of the sinks. We had fans on our moldy carpets all year. I also remember someone putting tide detergent all over one of the tiled hallways in our dorm and doing slip n’ slide for a few hours!”

“UMass turned the lounge on our floor into our dorm room and crammed four of us in there. It was nowhere near big enough and there was no privacy. It was such a nightmare. The first week I made good friends with my bunkmate who slept on the bunk below me. I introduced her to my sorta ex from high school (we broke up thinking we were going to different colleges, but then ended up at the same one and in my mind we were back together). One night I was woken up by my roommate in the bunk below having an intimate experience with someone. In the morning, when I came back from the showers, I was met with (you guessed it!) my ex getting out of my roommate’s bed. Welcome to college!”

“I woke up one weekend night to the sound of pouring water – rolled over and found my roommate squatting and peeing on the floor in our room. She had had a little too much fun at a party; came home and at some point woke up needing to go to the bathroom and thought that she was in the restroom, when, in fact, she was in front of her dresser.”

“The first week of school we were throwing parties throughout the entire eleventh floor of Aubuchon Hall. I even played beer pong and took shots with my RA at the time. Great times looking back on it.”

“During orientation week my freshman year a kid down the hall, from NH and into all things outdoors, decided to climb up the side of our 5 story brick dorm building and then rappel down. I saw him go flying by the window and wasn’t sure what was happening?”

“The time that I was in a dorm room, and sitting on one of the beds in a row were my first girlfriend, my second girlfriend, the lady with whom I was then-currently involved, and standing next to me would prove to be #4 in the sequence, two years later, and my future wife.”

“We had a 3-foot bong called The Alien that we stapled to the ceiling with an ace bandage so we could just swing it in a circle.”

“I was dating a woman from UMass Amherst and we had been away from my three bedroom dorm suite on Hemenway Ave. for a weekend. I had four roommates that shared bedrooms and I had the single, there was also a large common area and a bathroom. The four guys in the suite all came from Long Island, and they all went to high school together. I was the outlier, grew up on the Cape and didn’t know these guys at all. They all smoked cigarettes incessantly and had the habit of leaving their butts in a caddy hubcap in the center of the room – I mean it was full, probably hundreds of stinking butts in the hubcap in the common area, it was gross. Anyways, the wildest thing that I ever experienced was returning from the weekend with my girlfriend in tow and wanting to shower and hop into bed. We walk in and it’s silent, smells like butts, and smells really bad, disgusting, not like cigarettes. My girlfriend goes in and prepares to shower, when she opens the curtain, the biggest of the guys, pushing 300 pounds, is sitting in the tub covered in his own puke. That was the last straw, I petitioned to be let out of the dorm the next day and got into a nice apartment on Park Ave. with a better housemate and my own room. My girlfriend and I, to finish the story, ended up grabbing our stuff and heading to her folks place in Newton for the night.”

“College students often get the munchies late at night. Not everyone has a car and it was usually difficult to get off campus to get some fast food. The dining room services decided they would send a student selling prepared sandwiches around about 9:30 p.m. every night. The sandwiches were lousy and one of the guys on the dorm floor decided he could do better given his Italian heritage and desire to make a few bucks. He decided he would open for business at 9 p.m. every night; he converted his dorm room into a full service deli. He purchased a meat slicer and cold cuts and cheeses and a full size refrigerator. He hung salamis and provolone cheeses from his ceiling to give his ‘deli’ an authentic look. His wrestling team roommate served as the counter clerk and took the orders and collected the money. Frankie would slice the meat and make the sandwiches. I can remember vividly standing at his door, placing my order for an Italian sub off the menu board. The roommate clerk would reply in his memorable sing song, ‘Lettuce and tomato? Mustard or mayo? Chips? Soda?’ Once word got out around campus that the deli was open, lines formed in the corridor nightly and the sandwich man from the cafeteria went out of business. Of course, the school found out about the deli and, quoting health department regulations, sent security to shut it down.”

“We had the Exxon sign in one window and The Charles out the other with a view into Fenway. One evening in 1994 there were flashing lights across Cambridge at window level (8th floor). The MIT students had apparently disassembled and reassembled a police cruiser on top of the dome! Well played Beavers.”

“1977, streaking was the rage. The boys on the 2nd floor liked to drink, streak down the stairs near my room and streak around campus. One night, I had enough! I took the rock or stick or whatever was propping the door open and closed the door. They came back, no clothes and no keys! We could hear them cursing and trying to figure out how to get in. Many of the first floor suites were female, so they couldn’t knock on windows, they tried climbing up the balconies, but someone yelled at them. It took them a couple of hours to find someone to let them in. My roommate and I just sat in the dark laughing at their drunken problem solving. Good times.”

Be civil. Be kind.