A guy tried to break into my room last night as I slept

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s not - now that the adrenaline shock of it has worn off - as scary as it sounds (or felt).

I went to bed at about 11:30 last night and all was well. Then around 12:30, someone started making a ruckus in the hallway (I live in a dorm), and pounding on my door. Then they tried to open it.

The doors in my dorm have two locks: a chain, and a normal in-the-knob lock. I normally just use the chain at night, because my doorknob’s busted and I need to use the key to lock it, from the outside. Last night, as always, I had the chain on.

So it’s a bit past midnight, I’ve just dozed off and then been startled awake, and there’s a belligerent sounding man trying to force my door open against the chain. (For the record, I’m a 5-nothing, 100-pound woman.) “Oh, shit,” I think. The student population here is incredibly trusting and safe, but there have been a few incidents in the past few years. This past winter they found a few townies wandering around campus with guns. Four years ago a girl hadn’t locked her door and woke up in the middle of the night to a random man standing at the foot of her bed staring at her. Never any violence, but still, there is the possibility of it.

“Open the fucking door, man!” the guy is screaming, more or less throwing his weight against my door. The phone is right by the door and I’m completely terrified, so I do the only thing I can think of: scream for him to fuck off, and kick the door shut as hard as I can, which thankfully threw him off balance and made him stop. Then I picked up the phone and called the switchboard. By this point I’m fairly certain I know who it was, but still. “Hi, uh, I live in this dorm and some drunk guy was just trying to get into my room. Could you please send security down here?”

Normally, when you need campus security for something - if you’ve locked yourself out of your room, usually - it takes about ten, fifteen minutes for them to meander over. It felt like longer, but within two minutes there were two officers knocking on my door. They said that one of my neighbors had also just called, and that yes, it was a drunk-and-drugged freshman who’d gotten very confused and thought my room was his. They put him to bed and said they’d hang out in the immediate vicinity for a bit; tomorrow once he was vaguely coherent they’d have some words with him. That was really all they could do.

I tried to go back to bed, after wedging a chair in front of the door. It was a good ten minutes of deep breathing until my heart stopped pounding, and an hour or so before I could doze off into a fitful sleep again. And first thing this morning, I called maintenance and asked them to please come fix my doorknob today.

In retrospect it really shouldn’t be that frightening: I sort of know the guy and he was obviously very drunk and disoriented. Still, it’s odd how having your personal zone invaded like that can leave you so deeply unsettled.

2

Well, the last time that happened to me, my landlady had to fix the window the guy broke.

Don’t blame you for being unsettled or pissed off. It’s easy to write off in a dorm, but that still doesn’t mean it can’t be anywhere from annoying to kinda scary.

3

Gah. That sounds wildly unsettling. Hope you’re feeling better and everything is resolved to your satisfaction.

4

I’m glad you have called to get your doorknob fixed; and you had every reason to be frightened. Almost 30 years ago a guy walked into my dorm room (I had left the door unlocked because I was expecting my roommate in from work) and choked me semi-conscious and tried to rape me. Luckily, the guy wasn’t able to get into your room, and maybe nothing bad would have happened if he did - but always lock your door. If maintence doesn’t get to it today, call the president of the school tomorrow. Get it fixed. The next time there is a drunk wandering the halls you might not be so lucky.

5

Don’t apologize for being scared. What gets women into trouble is the feeling that they’re not allowed to make a scene when they feel unsafe – often in those situations they *are * unsafe, and by not being raising a fuss, they play into an attacker’s hands. Trust your gut.

You handled it well!

6

That’s flippin’ crazy! Glad it was just some drunkin’ frosh.

7

Whoa. That must’ve been terrifying.

Last winter, I woke up one morning to the sound of several men walking around in my hallway. For a moment I was frozen in my bed, not sure whether I should venture out or just call 911. But the men were making no effort to be quiet, and the tenor of their voices was, I deemed, non-threatening, so when I got my breath back I got up and asked them what the hell they were doing in my apartment. It turned out that my landlord thought I wouldn’t be back for another day and had asked the painters to do some work on the walls while I was gone (he’d mentioned this to me before I left, but I thought I’d made it clear when I’d be returning). I’ll never forget the moment of fear I experienced when I first woke up, though. Glad to hear you weren’t hurt or anything worse.

8

Good god, that’s incredibly scary. Don’t diminish it or feel like you shouldn’t have made a fuss. If he was so out of it that he didn’t know which room he was in, there was no guarantee he would have been reasonable if had managed to break in. He might have been belligerent with you for being in “his” room.

9

That’s so scary, NinjaChick! I’m glad you’re safe and that campus security responded so quickly.

A co-worker of mine lives on-campus in an apartment with her two kids. One night, she forgot to lock the door after bringing the pets in and woke up around 3:00 am to hear someone banging around her living room. Turned out to be a drunk student who’d mistaken her apartment for his own, stumbled in and passed out on her couch. She called campus security to roust the jack-ass, but it was very frightening for her. She says she never forgets to lock her doors now, though. You couldn’t pay me enough to live on campus as a staff member.

10

Yeah, we’ve got some faculty that live on campus. On the surface it seems like a pretty sweet deal for them - they get free rent in a decent apartment in exchange for being on-call as “senior residents” one week a month. But I’d hate to continue putting up with on-campus hijinks like that. Once I finish my undergrad, that’s the end of dorm life for me.

I don’t at all regret the way I reacted. They guy isn’t in any more trouble than he deserves (he did apparently get the promised talking-to and fined for underage drinking), nothing seriously bad happened, and I finally got my door fixed (they came by sometime this afternoon while I was at work). I’m not too eager to have it happen again, though.

11

You have my sympathy! Someone broke into my bedroom once. Creep just watched me till I woke up.

12

Make sure the incident is reported to the college.

Don’t assume that campus security will do that.

First make sure the residence hall has properly documented it, then the college.

Don’t give up. Make a fuss if necessary. Do NOT let them blow this off.

13

Oh how I second the above!

14

Huh? Security dealt with it (they’re the ones that hand out fines for underage drinking), and there’s really no one else to report it to. Even if there were, I’m not sure why I would - I know the guy, and while he is a jerk with some budding substance abuse problems, he’s not dangerous. I’m not sure why I’d want to make a big deal out of it.

15

Wow, yeah - don’t be apologetic for being completely flustered by the event. If I’m woken up by an unexpected phone call my heart races for a good bit before going back to bed!

Surely if you didn’t have ninja poise and confidence, the situation would have been much scarier.

16

Report it to residential life (or whatever office runs the dorms) and make sure you tell them about the broken lock in addition to maintenance.

17

Certainly there is – the local police! What he did was an attempted breaking-and-entering. (And not so attempted, since he actually broke your doorknob.) Here in Minnesota, the Sentencing Guidelines would be 12 months in a State Prison (assuming he has no prior convictions). The police talk with him, including mentioning “12 months in state prison”, would probably be much more memorable than the talk from campus security.

Also, if you know him, there’s someone else who you might notify: the parents that are probably paying for college. If he has “budding substance-abuse issues” (in addition to his incipient burglary career), they would seem to be the ones most likely to be concerned for him. They would probably be glad to know about his problems.

18

I’m thinking that you misread the OP. It sounds to me like the broken doorknob was a preexisting condition.

19

Scary indeed. My one time being burgled was in Hawaii, while I was in the shower! I heard him leave as I got out; he must have heard the water shut off and decided it was time to skedaddle. Made off with my wallet. That wasn’t as in-your-face as the OP’s experience, but it’s a weird feeling to say the least to realize an intruder was in your place while you were. I can only imagine what someone trying to batter their way in angrily would be like.

20

You think she should make the effort to notify his parents? Seriously? :dubious: I mean, I agree that this incident was a scary one and feeling terrified is a perfectly reasonable response that she shouldn’t be apologetic about. Notifying his parents seems a bit of over-kill, however. If the incident was reported, I would imagine that the school would take necessary measures to see that he’s suitably discouraged from doing it again. Hell, if she feels she should report to the police, then she should. But contacting his parents doesn’t seem like a reasonable solution. He’s in college, and should be taking responsibility for his own actions.