I am happy that when I was an undergrad (late 80s at Stanford) RAs were Advisors, not cops. RAs would check on you if you were binge drinking, and then talk to you about alcohol abuse - not write you up. There was pot smoking going on, and nobody really cared. RAs would not buy you alcohol, they left that to other upperclass students.
It made for a much better environment, IMHO.
Stories from the 90’s:
I had a male friend who it really seemed like the RA’s were really out to get. He made an enemy of one of the RA’s and the rest were just waiting to pounce. We were on a dry campus, he was underage. He also had some pot and paraphernalia in his room. He decided to toast himself up a hot pocket (toaster ovens were banned as well) and then forgot he was cooking and went to another part of campus. Once the burned hot pocket became apparent, they broke down his door. Had he not been on the shit list, they probably would have just left it all with a warning about the toaster oven. Since they really wanted to stick it to him they searched his room and found lots of alcohol, drugs and bongs.
They lined it all up outside his door and awaited his return. Someone warned him and he ended up hiding out as long as he could away from the dorm. He did eventually face the RA’s and they ended up kicking him out of the dorms.
I had two other friends who were over 21 who were reprimanded for drinking in their dorm room. Again, dry campus, even if you are over 21. They were given a written warning, but nothing else really happened.
Lots of people smoked up in their rooms, most of the people drank in their rooms. As long as you were careful about it, you could get away with it for the most part.
Yeah, the CJ guys (the cop wannabes) were the worst. We had one of those guys on our shift. Only he was completely incompetent and would a> leave campus during his shift, go hang out and occasionally radio in saying he was doing something we knew he wasn’t doing, because we were doing it; b> Go lock himself in a lounge and watch TV; or c> Go sleep somewhere.
One time we had a staff meeting in a building across campus from our offices. As we’re all walking back to the offices, he walks past a car in the parking lot where two kids were smoking. NOT WEED. We didn’t smell any weed, there was no weed. Dickhead gets it into his mind to try to impress our retired cop bosses and flags everyone down to try to have our entire department drag these kids out of their car and bust them for weed. Fortunately, our bosses were not (completely) stupid, knew from the smell that there was no weed involved, knew that yanking them out of their car in the parking lot was a dumb idea, and told Mr. Incompetent to shove off. Boy was he unhappy about it. Then later, when several of us told him there was no weed involved, he got hot about it and demanded to know how we knew. Yeah, we know what it smells like. “How do YOU know what it smells like?!?!!” My god you’re stupid. I’m in my 40’s. I fucking know what weed smells like, jackass.
As part of our RA training, a city copy burned a small amount of marijuana so each of us could smell it, just for this very reason. So we could tell the defense attorney, “Why, I know what it smells like because of my RA training!”
At UCSD in the latter 1970s, psychedelics (including MJ) were de facto legal in the dorms, but we often heard stories about people getting busted at other UC campuses, demonstrating how much stricter things were at some of them.
One of my old dormmates taught me a trick. If you’re concerned about the in-room smoke detectors (which were notoriously sensitive), cover it with an unlubricated condom. We never got caught.