Welcome to college, freshmen!

You may have made it through Welcome Week without any run-ins with the campus police (congrats!), but you still have plenty of opportunities to meet them up close and personal.

There are going to be many times this year and well into your college career that you will find yourself surrounded by alcohol. And, naturally, you are going to want to partake. Just beware–while you are navigating the university party scene, your RA’s, Campus Police, and Public Safety units are gearing up to bust underage revelers.

Here are some tips on how you can avoid getting written up before your first semester is over.

1. Don’t act like ‘The Freshman.’

Just because you suddenly have access to alcohol, it doesn’t mean you need to consume ALL of the alcohol at once. Even if the cops are out and about, they don’t have the manpower to hunt down every single underage boozer. So, they’ll zero in on the kid stumbling around with a trash can on his head before thinking twice about the passive mingler. The same goes with your RA, who really doesn’t want to walk in on you peeing in the corner of elevator. Read More »

Heading back to campus? Psyching yourself up to lug giant suitcases across the quad? Rinsing out that Nalgene in hopes of filling it with a cran / vodka combo? (Protip: just fill it with cran and watch all the drunk people say things everyone will forget except you.)

Whatever your attitude or mode of moving in, most likely the majority of you will be settling into dorms you’ve never lived in before. At first, everything is clean and vacuumed and smelling like Glade. At first, it seems like you’ve picked the absolute best place to sleep, study, and veg out after a giant Econ test. But then.

The weekend happens. And suddenly it hits you like a splatter of what you hope is cake: you’re smack dab in the middle of a party dorm.

Here are a few ways to tell you’re living in the Bermuda Triangle of beer and screaming.

As you’re moving in, you notice that you’re the only one dragging a suitcase into your room. Everyone else is hauling dollies of 12 packs.

Your roommates are really friendly! Or…why are their eyes drooping like that?

The community fridge is stocked with liquor, sour cream, and mixers.

The community cupboards are filled with cheetos, salsa, pork rinds, and Alka Seltzer.

It’s Monday night, you’re reading Proust, and it sounds like the people in the room next to you are throwing…what’s that? Quarters? And then cheering? Read More »

Let’s just cut to it - sixteen people are left in that bed.

Their challenge for the day is a biathlon and with that, I am over the whole Tila’s bi thing and it’s only episode three. Tila looks bored as she announces that it’s boys versus girls. What do pearl necklaces and blue balls have to do with biathlons? Oh.

This challenge makes me wonder why I never had a slip n slide when I was a kid. “I cruised through it until I got to the blue balls; then it all fell apart for me…that was my downfall, the blue balls.” Isn’t that how it always happens, Ryan?

Do they all share a wet suit? Chad is last and he too struggles with blue balls. Why do they call Jersey Lisa/Toni from Paradise Hotel lookalike Rizzo? I like her. I might like-her like her. Oh, and she wins it for the girls. Aw, Chad, I heart you even though you lost.

The girls win a date. Which consists of the girls – going to school. They are dressed in terrible school girl uniforms and Tila’s going to teach them – what? How to make a Myspace page? Read More »