Destroying your dorm room by causing a fire is bad enough, getting busted for drugs on top of that, was unacceptable

Props to this website, for making me recall this really great story from my college days. It was dark, cold and unfriendly outside in Ithaca NY, and in the dorms, things were relatively quiet. In the newly built dorm (Emerson Hall) on campus, my future roommate and her then-bf were cuddling and, against the rules, had lit candles to set the mood. Unfortunately they fell asleep and left the candles burning.

This led to smoke, which led to fire as the dresser on which the candle had been placed set ablaze. My roomie awoke when the smoke was beginning to choke all of the oxygen out of the air and grabbed her barely clothed boyfriend and ran out of the room. In her haste, the door was left open which spread the flames to the beds and the closets. In no time, there was a small inferno and the entire dorm was evacuated into the snow as the fire department put out the fire, which by this time, had consumed most of the contents of the room. The RD and the police said they would search the room the following day and see what started the blaze but for that night they would have to find other sleeping arrangements before a new dorm room could be issued.

Later that night, we were all gathered in my room talking about what happened and how the smoke alarm never went off when my friend realized that the next day, during the search, they would eventually find the half pound of weed she had in her dresser and the various paraphernalia all stoners keep in their abodes. A plan was hatched, because just destroying a room is bad enough but to do that AND be arrested is just something that should never happen!

I went over and started chatting up the security clown posted outside the dorm room- I should mention that theirs was a first floor room so sneaking in through the window (which the fire department had to smash anyway), wouldn’t be a problem. As I was talking to the security guard, I could hear the boyfriend stomping around in the room, stepping on glass and other debris and searching for the weed and some photo albums/clothes. I hear a large amount of glass smash after five minutes of making inane chit chat about the fire and being a security guard, playing it off as a concerned dorm resident. The security guard hears the smash and opened the door just in time to see the boyfriend jumping out the window. Luckily it was dark and there were no lights left because he started screaming and shining his flashlight out the window into the murky darkness. By that time, I had run back upstairs to my room where my friend was consoling her boyfriend who was panting heavily and pissed about the cut he sustained on his hand.

Thankfully, he did get the weed and the photos and some of her clothes and the headline in the campus paper said "Students Burglarize Destroyed Dorm." I always thought, later on, that it was interesting that they would not secure the windows, yet posted a guard outside the locked door. We all got incredibly stoned and also thankfully, since the smoke alarm was found to be faulty, they didn’t have to pay for completely destroying an entire dorm room worth of furniture.