Our RA suggested that we have an open door policy in order to foster a community on the sixth floor.  He meant this literally and figuratively — have an open attitude toward meeting people on the floor, obviously, and keep your door ajar if you’re in the mood to hang out. It was the first night of college, classes weren’t for another week and most people had virtually no obligations: everyone was in the mood to hang out.

My suitemate and I decided over Palladium sushi that we would implement the policy as soon as we got back to our room. Her roommate was somehow already extremely involved with the golf team and neither of us had even seen mine yet, so the two of us clung to each other all day.

We were invited to hang out in the suite next door almost immediately. The scene: six guys standing around the common area, boxes and luggage scattered but no other signs of move-in progress, blue cups in a beer pong formation, a six-pack of Sam Adams.

I’m not sure whether we hung out for 10 minutes or 45. Neither my friend nor I was offered a drink (a six-pack between eight people doesn’t really go too far), though we probably would have taken one gladly. We sat on the couch for a little while, demurely watched the boys play water pong and basked in our newfound college careers. As we stood up to leave, there was an aggressive slam on the door.

I kept waiting for someone to expose the whole thing as an elaborate prank, the RAs to laugh and welcome us to college. But they weren’t laughing when they asked to see our newly-minted NYU IDs and officially wrote us up for being in the presence of alcohol and participating in drinking games. The RAs seemed apologetic, as if they wished they had never knocked. They wanted us to give them the rest of the alcohol to prove a point, but there wasn’t anything to pour down the sink.

Lily and I ran back to our suite, breaking down into uncontrollable laughter. We were innocent, we didn’t care, we were sure there wouldn’t be any consequences. It was a story, we decided, and it was. We would go on to watch movies and cook and laugh and sleep with a few of those guys many times. We would make getting written up on the first night of the semester a tradition, next time in Gramercy. We would be friends for years.