Guthrie senior Sedrick Fykes, a former resident assistant, said he was annoyed at the knock on his door around 3 a.m. His sleep had been disrupted by one of his residents, who claimed that a bathroom in the building was flooded with water.

“I went to check it out to see if they were exaggerating,” Fykes said.

When he arrived on the scene, Fykes said the resident’s alarm was justified. A tap had been ripped off the wall and was spewing water throughout the bathroom.

Louisville senior Chris Inman, a fellow RA, was soon notified. The flooded bathroom was on his floor.

“It was a geyser,” Inman said. “It was seriously spraying up six inches from the ceiling.”

This is just one incident of the horror stories former RAs have lived to tell on WKU’s campus.

Both Fykes and Inman were RAs in Barnes-Campbell Hall for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years.

Both chose the job because they wanted to interact with other students.

“I liked the idea of working right where I live,” Inman said. “And it’s a people job.”

Yet, both were surprised with the workload once they were on the job.

“You kind of always have to be on your toes,” Inman said.

Inman and Fykes said they dealt with injuries, property damages and student behavior on top of the planning and organizing of being an RA.

Fykes remembered a time when he took one of his residents to the emergency room after an unlikely accident.

Fykes said three of his residents were joking around with his keys when one of the residents dropped them on the ground. Two residents bent down to pick them up and had a head-on collision.

“One of them was bleeding, and he was freaking out,” Fykes said. “He said, ‘Sedrick, take me to the hospital.’”

Three hours and six stitches later, Fykes said he was closer to his residents than ever before.

Becca Schaefer, a recent graduate of WKU, who was an RA in Pearce-Ford Tower for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years, said she remembers more than just the scary stories.

Her first year as an RA, she was sick with a cold. After briefly leaving her room, Schaefer came back to find residents had taped crackers and tissues to her door.

The next year, her residents pranked her door for her 21st birthday while she was sleeping.

Schaefer said they found a piece of paper to cover her doorframe and stuffed the space between the frame and her door with crumpled newspapers, using the large sheet of paper as a barrier.

When she woke up, she opened her door to the surprise.

“There was paper everywhere,” Schaefer said.

Now that Fykes and Inman are out of the dorms and living in off-campus apartments, they said they miss certain parts of their old jobs.

“I always liked being able to open my door or go down to the front desk and see people,” Inman said.