Community Advisors are prepared, engaged leaders who whole-heartedly agree to face responsibilities that most people would turn and sprint far away from.  This blog will expose the details of their most exciting on-the-job experiences–from the funny encounters to the far-fetched, and everywhere in between.  Read along and receive an inside look at the secret lives of CA’s.

This week I interviewed Castleton alumnus Matthew Levins, who was a CA during three of his four years at Castleton. Our conversation started with him listing off the more typical happenings that he would deal with on a regular basis:

• girls who won't stop crying for no other reason than they're drunk
• boys getting into fights for no other reason than they're drunk
• during room inspections: finding weed in dorms decorated with Bob Marley flags and 420 stickers, and then kid's responses being "I don't even smoke weed"

He talked about how it never failed that a fight would break out during paint parties, and that evidence of the fight would be seen in the form of paint smeared all over the walls and floor.  (I'm sure you can guess whose job is it to clean up all of that evidence??)

Once in a while he would need to help students who needed to be "transported" to Rutland Regional for being too drunk.  Quotation marks on transported because that is CA terminology for people who get themselves in those scenarios.

"There's also those people who, no matter what you were talking to them about, they would ask are you gonna call my parents?"  Levins' voice rose and became super whiny when describing and reenacting the last part. 

"Like, nooo, you're an adult now… Come on," he said, speaking to the countless faces he's imagining in his mind as he speaks.

"One guy had a knife pulled on him, and he and his friends came barrelling into the dorm screaming and yelling.  That was pretty scary.  The guy with the knife ended up getting kicked out of school for the year," Levins said.

But my personal favorite story of Levins' was when he said this:

"There was this international student who couldn't speak English when she was wasted."

Hahahhhahahahahaha. Gold.

"We had her birthday on file, but it was written the European way, so we thought she was 21.  But we couldn't understand her when we would try and talk to her so we couldn't confirm her birthday."

Not really sure what that means exactly, but I'm just picturing this girl having a grand ole time witnessing the different looks she gets while speaking Swedish to her American CAs and friends.

Oh, fun fact, Matt was my CA during one of the years that he worked here.  So it was kind of ironic that I interviewed him for this blog, because I'm sure he has the missing puzzle pieces to a few blurry weekends of mine.  He graciously left those stories out of the interview.