The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership. That’s John Belushi, star of “Animal House,” in the photo.
Halfway through my sophomore year in college we got a new resident assistant on our dormitory floor. We had driven the previous one to a nervous breakdown and the administration decided to try a different strategy. They gave us a “stoner” RA, thinking that he would be on the same wavelength.
What the administration failed to understand is the difference between a stoner and a juvenile-minded troublemaker. We hated him instantly. There was a bulletin board outside his room/office and he spent an excessive amount of effort keeping it fresh and up-to-date. He would post announcements of upcoming social events, relevant articles from the school newspaper, sports scores and even pictures of celebrities from magazines with “humorous” captions. It was his artistic outlet. He called it “THE BEER HUNTER REPORTS,” after a famous comedy routine of the day, and he cut elaborate letters from construction paper spelling that out.
Late one night, after perhaps a beer or two, we got bored, took down all the letters and attempted to rearrange them into something embarrassing, dirty or funny. Unfortunately, we could not come up with anything clever using those letters. The best we could do was, “SHE BE HURT FOR RENT.”
Now, you’re probably thinking, “But there’s no F in THE BEER HUNTER REPORTS.” We cut the bottom line off an E.
Whether out of disgust, disappointment or simply disinterest, the RA left it like that and never said a word about it. Whenever we had a visitor to the floor they would see it and give us a quizzical look. We would shrug and say, “Stoner RA, what ya gonna do?”
Toward the end of that school year, I was filling out some form and put my address as 312 Gamertsfelder Hall. The guy reviewing the form verified my address, looked up at me and exclaimed, “Oh, you live on the SHE BE HURT FOR RENT floor.”
Before Facebook, that’s what passed for fame.