When he opened his eyes he didn’t see his ceiling. He wasn’t lying in his bed and he wasn’t wearing the same clothes as the night before. He got up from the pullout couch and collected himself for a minute, just before leaving the suite on the top floor of Castleton Hall. Each step down the hallway felt a little more sobering, but any recollection of the night before wasn’t likely.

He examined his hand in the empty corridor, noticing it had 27 hash marks on it. The tallies were recorded during Jello shots the night before: the primary cause to his short-term memory loss.

As he attempted to trigger his memory on the events prior to this morning, another body entered the hallway. No greetings were exchanged, but still a quick hello.

“Thanks a lot, asshole,” said the girl.

This groggy blackout victim, who will go by the alias of Munch, headed back to his dorm to find out what he did on Halloween.

Searching for answers

“I remember little parts of every event, but I don’t remember times, or who I was with,” said Munch, explaining the fuzziness still surrounding the night.

The breakfast crowd informed Munch on his antics from the night before. It was a lot to take in, Munch said.

He found out he had stolen an Indiana Jones whip, a pimp chalice, a stethoscope, had been punched in the eye by Public Safety, and got an entire suite written up for drinking — all before he could swallow his milk.

This explained the “asshole” comment that had been delivered on his way out of Castleton Hall earlier.

“I was nervous to go out the rest of the day,” Munch said. “I just wanted to stay in my room all day.”

At the start of the Halloween festivities, Munch had been given the chance to take a free ticket to Flubberbusters in New York. Instead of joining the mass of sweaty bodies in Flubbs, he said he would rather wander around campus and meet new people.

As the crowd boarded for Flubbs, Munch saw them off, waving goodbye. That is when his memory became ceased to function.

What happened?

“For two weeks I would run into people and they would tell me a story about that night,” said Munch, laughing as he thought of the stories he had been told.

“My friend Ben stopped me in Huden and asked me for his pimp cup back. I was apparently holding a whip in my hand and asked him for his cup.,” Munch continued. “I told him I was going to take him somewhere majestic. He told me to hang on for a second, and when he came back I was going down the elevator.”

Another friend, who wished to remain nameless, was with Munch in Castleton Hall after a majority of students left for Flubbs. He and Munch were on the top floor, seeing who was still around.

Munch disappeared from the scene just before returning with five packets of soap. The guys weren’t using the soap for showering, but instead concocting a makeshift slip and slide in the hallway. Soap alone wouldn’t successfully do the job, so Munch filled up garbage cans with water to lubricate the tile floor.

A crowd of about 15, according to more sober students on the scene, watched Munch penguin slide down the hallway’s soapy path. During the next hour he managed to throw pumpkins out of a suite window, attracting the attention of the schools public safety officers.

This led to the suite receiving drinking write-ups, while developing distaste for this Munch character. He had again used his stealth to escape the scene, now free to hide out in Babcock Hall.

“I have an Indiana Jones hat – FIND ME!”

As the last bus was leaving Flubbs, freshmen Brittany Baron received four voicemails immediately. All of the messages were left by Munch — some advertising a slip and slide, others pleading for help.

“Yo, the CA’s are after me. They know I made a slip and slide in Castleton. I have an Indiana Jones hat, find me!,” Munches voice rang out from Baron’s cell phone.

“He called me again after we got back,” said Baron. “He said he was in a little white room being held captive and that he needed me and Will to go and get him.”

Will Johnson, a Castleton sophomore, received a call from Munch after his conversation with Baron. Munch said to let him in the back of Castleton Hall. Johnson reached the back door and surveyed the area for his friend.

A light came into focus just by the wood line, with Munch coming into sight shortly after, wearing nothing but a green t-shirt and blue boxers.

“Public safety punched me in the freaking eye,” was the first thing Munch said to Will.

Johnson said he brought Munch upstairs after that.

“Something happened to that kid, he was scared as shit,” Johnson said, explaining the terrified state Munch returned in. “He just started to freak out. He saw someone get out of the bathroom from taking a shower, so he decided he needed a shower. The next morning he never remembered the shower.”

Another Castleton resident shared Johnson’s perspective on Munch’s state of mind when he was back in the suites.

“When I left for Flubbs I shook his hand and he was fine,” said Spikey Mike Baldino, one of the few sober students on Halloween. “When I came back from Flubbs he was cut up and looked disturbed and lost.”

After breakfast breakthrough

After the breakfast, the day following Halloween, Munch had a major cognitive breakthrough. He didn’t know if it was a dream, or something that had actually happened on Halloween. The image of running face-first into a fence was replaying over and over in his mind.

“I had these quarter second flashbacks,” Munch said, describing the hazy memories.

Munch said he spoke to one of his public safety captors the following night. He told Munch that he saw the officer and ran down the stairs. Munch ran out of the building toward the construction site in front of Glenbrook Gymnasium.

Instead of jumping the fence and continuing his flow of ninja stealth, Munch ran face first into the metal fence. The memory of the fence just before impact is the only thing Munch can recall from the incident. Whatever took place after, he assumes, led him to the public safety hut.

Public safety director Bob Godlewski was unavailable for comments.

Munch knew after the hungover, groggy feeling subsided, that he would face some sort of consequence for his night on campus. With a glass half full outlook, he hoped he was going to get lucky and public safety would never find him.

Busted

He said waking up in a different room was a clue that he might not have gotten caught. But as sure as can be, public safety had caught him, and he was facing bigger consequences than he first thought.

Munch had a meeting with Castleton Area Coordinator, Daniel Gardner, to discuss the situation at hand. They talked about what happened and the repercussions that were about to come.

The final sentencing was a two-year ban from Castleton Hall, unless Munch was able to complete 20 hours of community service and complete two apology letters. The letters are to be addressed to the former cleaning lady of Castleton Hall and the residents he was responsible for getting written up.

“I don’t regret it, but it has made me gain wisdom from the experience,” Munch said, shedding some light on his night of rather interesting decisions.

“I feel like life is living and learning. If you’re not living you can’t learn,” he said. “You don’t know what tomorrow will bring…