By Sherrie Eddington
Snore.
Maybe the occasional baby cry, or a stray dog digging in the trash.
Those are the only sounds coming from most residential areas between midnight and 4 a.m. But in some places - namely, BYU dorms - the crowds are far from dreamland.
'The guy across the hall has a feature showing every Thursday and Friday night,' said Johnny Egbert, an 18-year-old vocal performance major from Phoenix, who lives in Helaman Halls. 'The late show starts at 12:30.'
Walking onto a dorm floor in the middle of the night can introduce a visitor to everything from studying and watching movies to 'cavorting' and riding bikes, all from the comfort of their own rooms and halls.
Pranks are another feature of dorm life that seems to characterize the experience for many. One student came home to find his room completely filled to the roof with newspaper.
'It took us about four or five hours ... with about five or six guys helping fill it up,' said Jeramy Ferguson, one of the pranksters, a freshman from Stewartstown, Pa., majoring in political science. 'Cleanup ... took one or two hours to get all of the newspaper out of the room and into bags. The hall smelled of newspaper for a week.'
Another time, Stover residents added a new twist to the fairly commonplace idea of emptying out a room. Not only did they pull most of the items from the room and deposit them in the showers, but the extra space was just too tantalizing. They carefully filled up dozens of small water cups and meticulously covered the floor.
'They could not move around, and it made it harder for them to move their stuff back in,' said another prankster, Mark Fernelius, a mechanical engineering student from Shippensburg, Pa. 'Their reaction was priceless.'
Ferguson remembered being even more amused at the reaction when the two recipients of the prank realized they''d left a magnet over the latch of their door, preventing the door from locking and providing the irresistible opportunity.
Sometimes students are an active part of the late-night going-ons, but on occasion, dorm residents are innocent victims of someone else''s excitement. Jonathan Steven Potter, an English major from Houston, remembers being startled by a strange visitor around 1:30 in the morning this semester.
'There was this girl in a bird costume dancing outside my window,' Potter said.
On a normal weekday night, things are a little calmer, but for most students, dorm traditions are a natural side effect of living on campus. From tame to crazy, so many students in such a small space present a unique situation for everyone.
'My roommates usually do vending machine runs, just to stay up while they''re studying,' said Lizann Dernick, 18, a recreational management major from Houston.
Girls'' halls in particular have movie nights every night and of course the typical boy talks. Most student halls have at least some semblance of normalcy, but a couple of guys'' floors at Deseret Towers have a special tradition that facilitates plenty of male bonding for everyone, starting at midnight on Thursday mornings.
'We don''t know how ''No Pants Thursday'' came about,' said Steve Hackett, 18, from Ann Arbor, Mich. He shrugged and continued, 'It''s not a very exciting tradition; you''re just not allowed to wear pants on Thursdays. It''s not like we''re completely exposed; we wear boxers.'
'No Pants Thursday' produces more than just roaming boxer-clad residents - this tradition also features freestyle rap till the early hours of the morning.
So, what about sleep? Most students mentioned the complete absence of sleeping residents at any given hour, citing naps and Saturdays as the reserved sleep times.
'Our classes don''t start till noon,' Egbert said. 'If we go to bed at 4, that''s a healthy eight hours.'
Although sleep is scarce and students may sometimes get more play in than work, at least the dorm experience is good for a decent story.
'Mom, what did Dad do for fun in college?'