When I was an Resident Assistant at Loyola, I saw a lot of things I wasn't sure I would see when I signed up for the job. It was my junior year at Loyola. The year that ROTC paid for my tuition and books, and the RA position paid for my room and board. It was also the year I carried an 18 hour fall and spring semester, including a class on the complete works of Shakespeare, decided to join the Theatre crowd, and took a job as a bouncer at Hamilton's, a local bar. Busy.
Campion Hall was the name of the residence hall where I lived. It was an all guys dorm. No girls allowed after 10pm on weekdays, 12am on weekends. That didn't necessarily stop us. I was the RA for 1-South, which was the wing where I lived the previous two years. I loved Campion Hall and I loved 1-South, if not for the independence that a college dorm brought with it, but for the relationships that came with living with 33 guys from across the country and across the world (thank you, Ivan McCullagh).
My first night on duty, I was scheduled with Bob Porter. Bob had a nose for breaking the rules, literally. I didn't know this at the time, but when we were finishing our first pass at "rounds," I was about to experience the sniffer of a trained police dog.
We were at the end of 2-North with only one floor to go. The night was quiet, and I was glad that my initiation as an RA was going so smoothly. When we got to the end of the hall and were just about to open the door to take the stairs to the 3rd floor, Bob stopped. He looked and me and waited. I didn't respond as he expected. He looked at me and waited again. Nothing.
"Well," he said.
"Well what?" I asked.
"Walk with me."
I followed Bob as he turned around and walked back through 2-North. We hit the center of the hallway, turned, and walked back down to the end. Again, no response from me.
"Take a whiff," Bob said.
I pulled all of the air I could into my nose, held it, and exhaled saying, "Why am I doing this?"
Thoroughly disappointed and frustrated, Bob asked. "You don't smell that? Take another whiff."
I did as instructed, more fearful of disappointing than concerned about someone breaking the rules. "What am I smelling for, Bob?" I asked.
"Really? You don't smell that?" Bob wanted a tight case. Open and close. He didn't want to risk the possibility of tainting the "jury pool" by letting in on his suspicion. But as it became clear that my ability to sniff out trouble was as keen as Ray Charles' ability to be a star visual witness, was unrealistic, Bob helped me out.
"You don't smell pot?"
I inhaled deeply. Again, nothing. "Nope," I said.
Bob sniffed around as he walked back and forth in the hallway. He was sure he pinpointed the room the smell was actually coming from. "It's in here," he said. "Whoever is in here, is getting high."
"High? Like smoking pot?" I said.
"We have to knock," Bob said. "Knock on the door. If the guilty dudes are in there, and they are baked out enough to confess, their stupid enough and we have to bust them."
"Really?" I asked. "Is this what being an RA is all about."
Bob did not bother to answer me. He led me to the door and knocked. We could hear a faint trace of "The Cure" coming from within. Bob knocked again. This time, the door opened.
A thick, curly haired kid answered the door. He was obviously high or sleeping. Maybe both.
"You smoking pot in there?" Bob asked.
"Dude, what?" the kid said. His eyes gave all of his secrets away.
Bob looked at me. He needed a partner in all of this.
"High," I said, "are you getting high in there."
The kid looked at both of us. We were clearly not asked because we wanted to join him. I was carrying a clipboard with a dangling pen attached by a string, and Bob was carrying a flashlight.
"Well?" Bob said.
The kid took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said, "we're getting high. Why?"
Bob looked at me as if he was cursing his nose. While he subjected his life to the rules as defined by the law, Bob didn't necessarily subject everyone to his morals. Sure, he expected residents to obey the rules as set forth by the school in relation to illegal drugs being consumed on campus, but he wasn't the law. He would have preferred the kid lied, I think. Telling us we were wrong. Telling us we needed to get our noses checked at the school health center. Telling us without telling us, to go away.
But no one got off that lucky. Since the kid confessed to smoking pot in his room, we were forced to not only write him up, but to consult with University Security, who had to inform the kid's parents and tell the Chicago Police.
It was a scary first night. One that changed the life of a kid who simply wanted to get high. One that changed that life of a kid that wanted to get high, and who wanted to just find his way. He was on the wrong path, I assumed. He was a walking poster for all of those drug ads I saw in high school. The ones that fried a couple of eggs on a pan and warned viewers that drugs do the same thing.
I wrote up over 25 people that year. A record of some sort, maybe.
I've always wondered what happened to that kid. Did he get kicked out of school? Did he wind up penniless, broken, in and out of rehab facilities on a constant basis? Maybe not. Maybe, I like to think, that he is a government official, fighting the good fight against the war on drugs. Or maybe he's just like me. A guy who is happy. A guy who has a wife, two kids, a dog, a job, and a mortgage. A guy who could have lived a life of drugs and crime, but who is thankful for the night, when two guys knocked on his door, because one guy had a nose that was ready to fight crime.
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