<p>About a week ago, I found out that why my roommate usually comes in the middle of the night, at about 1-2 AM in the morning. He gets drunk, just like everyone else on my floor. Of course, one might say, this is college, and it's normal. However, last weekend he got so drunk, his friends thought he'd die or pass out. Due to that reason, they called a bunch of other RAs, including mine, to check on him... at 3 AM in the morning, banging on the doors, disrupting everyone and waking everyone up. </p>
<p>After that night, I wrote my RA a letter complaining about the way they were handling the problem. Obviously I wasn't the only one mad about the disruption just because someone decided to get drunk, who's not even 21 yet. My question is: To what extent is it the responsibility of the RAs to handle a "problem", that is, someone deciding to get drunk, risking his own health, to disrupt everyone in the middle of the night? How is that taking care of ones safety if the particular person made his own choice of getting drunk? </p>
<p>I've talked to a few classmates about this, and they didn't react as if they'd have been ok with that either, nor my girlfriend or my parents. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>They are responsible to assure the safety of their residents. If they had to bang on the door for someone to wake up, then tough cookies; that’s what they had to do.</p>
<p>Alcohol poisoning is quite serious. Is there even reasonable belief that someone my die or but seriously injured, it is the RA responsibility to make sure that person is ok even in the dead of night. Even if the person made the choice to drink illegally that doesn’t mean everyone else should just forsake his health.</p>
<p>I guess I’ll play devil’s advocate here, as usual:</p>
<p>There’s a difference between waking everyone on the floor up by banging on every door and just rapping on one door to see if the resident is okay.</p>
<p>To be fair, we do only have one side of the story (not the RA’s or even the other residents). What’s banging on doors to one person is not necessarily banging on doors to another person. The RAs may have described the same experience was knocking on a few doors to make sure that everyone was all right. For instance, I’m a very heavy sleeper, so rapping on my door in the middle of the night probably wouldn’t wake me up–and it definitely wouldn’t wake up someone who was passed out from too much alcohol.</p>
<p>Also, I’m assuming since the OP said that this was his “roommate” that they’re at least in the same room or the same suite (or relatively near each other, although I may be wrong about that). The RA’s may not have woken up everyone on the floor, but instead woke up the suite or the room by knocking on the roommates door. They may have not even been sure which room exactly was his (for instance, if it was in a suite or something), or they may have wanted to check on his roommates as well to make sure they were okay. Also, who knows how dire the roommate’s friends made it sound? The story may have sounded more extreme than it actually was, and the RA’s reacted accordingly. The adrenaline rush you get when you’re told someone could be dying in their room can be pretty high.</p>
<p>I would still rather be woken up than have my roommate die. If it happened every night, then maybe this roommate needs some additional help.</p>