Shannon KeoughI wasn’t even a week into my freshman year before I got written up for the first time. Actually I wasn’t even two nights deep into my freshman year. It was the third night that I learned how the infamous Cabrini College disciplinary system worked.
After two nights of meeting people and doing not much of anything my roommates and I decided it was time to make the best of our first week away at college. My two roommates decided that they were going to go to the King of Prussia mall in search of a nice big table for some entertainment. My job was to get some beverages for the night.
My roommates got back to campus with a long display table that they got with a five-finger-discount from Macys. At that point we knew that it was going to be a good night. We all got ready and began to drink. We wrote all over our new table that fit perfectly in our tiny room in Xavier.
We began to invite our neighbors over. Then we began calling all of the new people that we met during our first two days on campus. Things were going great and we were having a good time.
However, I can now say that things were getting a little out of control. There were too many people squeezed into our dorm room, the music was loud and the sweet smell of alcohol devoured the room.
But what did we care? We were having fun. We made sure as people came in and out of the room they gave a little friendly knock to get back in. The night went on a little bit longer until we got a real taste of life in the freshman dorms.
Bang! Bang! Bang! There was a not so friendly knock at the door and all we heard were the words “public safety.”
We tried to gather all the beer and hide people before we opened the door but the longer we took the harder they banged and the louder they yelled.
Finally we opened the door and were greeted by two public safety officers and about six RA’s. They let everyone in the room go but my two roommates and I. They took our information down and told us that we would be contacted at a later time about what would happen to us.
In a drunken stupor we asked them how they knew we were drinking. They told us the sound of a ball hitting a cup and bouncing on the floor followed by ten people screaming was one hint, the other being the smell of a stale beer lingering in the halls.
That week, we had letters waiting for us at our dorm room. We had to go pay a visit to the Area Coordinator who gave us our punishment.
Our meeting ended with them coming to our room to confiscate our table which we tried to convince them was just our dinner table.
They also made the three of us attend a more or less Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and we had to make a speech at an event titled “Mocktails” about why drinking is not good for you. To top it all off each of us had to pay a $100 fine.
In the end, I felt that the punishments were pointless and meaningless to all of us. We weren’t alcoholics, we were just college students who wanted to have a good time during our first few nights.
Our speech went well being that all of our friends were there to laugh at us and take pictures.
We made a mockery of this mocking of cocktails.
The best part of that night was when we took all of the fake cocktails they had at the event down to our room to make real cocktails.
My advice to you freshmen out there would be to party safely and make sure your little dorm parties don’t get too out of control.
Drinking violation- $100, alcohol- $80, solo cups- $4.99, making lifelong memories in the freshman dorms= priceless.
