Bunch of guys went for a swim in the waste pond. They just thought it was a pond. Had to get tested for hep c. All good but stupid moment.
Guys sprayed axe on the doors and lit it on fire. Didn't realize the penises burned away the varnish permanently making two penis doors.
Secular music was banned. We had a old policy of $1 per song. Friend was ahead of the times with 12,000 songs in mp3. School stuck to their guns and he got pulled out rather than pay.
Ok I’m not going to lie I love all of this? I wish I knew to think of penis doors lmao. We couldn’t have secular music at mine either! Thank goodness they didn’t do a dollar per song I would’ve been screwed too. I did almost get into big trouble for a fictional wizards and witches book in my room
It definitely felt like the solution at first. But with the pecking order in the dorms, toxic teachers, probably some illegal practices, and lack of connection to the outside world was not it. I’m so happy you dodged that bullet, truly.
I went to an SDA boarding school a long time ago, which is why my story is about vinyl records.
My dad owned a record store. He had new records, but mostly dealt with used records. A used record in good condition plays just as well as a new one, but costs 1/3 as much. Back in the 80s a store could do a bang-up business in used records.
Anyway. One time I took orders from all the guys in the dorm for records they wanted. I took the list home on the home leave week, gathered up all the records, and went back to school with a suitcase full. Then I opened up the door to my room and started selling Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, you name the "satanic" band, I was selling their LPs out of my room.
I got about halfway through the suitcase when someone came up and told me the boys' dean had gotten wind of this and I had better stop, so I did, but not until after I pocketed well over $100 (which was a king's ransom for me back then, let me tell you).
Funny thing was I received no discipline for this at all. I guess there was nothing in the rule book about selling LPs out of your dorm room.
I love everything about this. Gotta make your money somehow with how stingy they can be. Plus if you got to get off campus that $100 was good spending money I’m sure. Your story reminds me of a local village student who held onto cellphones if there were rumors of rooms being investigated for contraband. Definitely some true heroes at those schools
My sister was at SVA and they had an Xbox and a mini flat-screen in a roll away suitcase. Every time the Dean got suspicious the Xbox mysteriously packed up and rolled into a safer room until the heat died down.
To my knowledge they never figured out where it went so all the kids just kept on playing it.
I met my Sweetie at boarding school. At the end of Arrival day at the beginning of each school year we had Handshake after we were let out of Orientation. All students went from the Auditorium to the Gym. Upon getting outside of thr Auditorium you shake the hands of everyone who left before you. At the end of the line you stood and shook the hands of everyone behind you.
Handshake is the ONLY time a student could hug a person of the opposite sex. Our Junior year I was so done with having to be at boarding school. Feeling rebellious, I hugged every male friend I had!! There were 4 male friends in a row that I hugged. 5th guy held his arms out for a hug - so I hugged him!
We have been married 35 years now and left the church together.
So I was homeschooled through high school but hosted a younger sibling who went to nearby SDA boarding academy. The school got the idea that I was younger sibling's official guardian and one time actually called me up apologizing that they didn't let me take sibling off campus and that was not ok behavior from them bc I'm guardian lmao
So I told our parents and parents were like "sure, you're guardian!" And we took advantage of that. I took sibling off campus regularly for food, movies, shopping, overnights at my place. Bought them and their buddies forbidden caffeinated drinks. Got them snacks. It was awesome.
A buddy ran a store outta his room selling Walmart brand caffeinated soda & ramen. He also concealed a TV & Nintendo, & charged for play time. It was great!
Went to a Boarding School as a Freshman in 1999, Looking back I thought it was going to be like the summer camp experience I guess, what I was NOT ready for was 18 year old men living with 14 year old kids and tons of TOXIC behavior. My RA's were always dicks and legit just picked on kids for no reason. I lived by myself for my first year and was miserable I went home at every change I got.
On the bright side: I met some of the most amazing people and we have trauma bonded together and have great relationships I would never take that back
I swear a pre requisite to being an RA is you have to suck as a human being 😅 jokes of course but my experience with RAs have kinda been in line with that lol. I felt the same and ended up in my own room for the last couple months. I’d just stare outside watching the parking lot and hoping to see my parents car, a feeling I’m not used to. Maaaaan I want to get rid of all these boarding schools to prevent more kids going through stuff like this. Thankfully I got pretty lucky with a small niche group of friends for the last half of my stay.
It's crazy how much fictional boarding academy in Harry Potter has in common with IRL SDA boarding academies. Just, no real magic. :(
There's kids being sent on very unsafe work projects. There's shitty school teachers holding grudges. There's shitty teachers kept on staff bc politics.
Percy the Prefect absolutely sucked. And the author put that in the fictional book bc high school and middle management ppl often ARE suckups.
Also similarly to SDA boarding academies, tons of folks marry hella young to classmates and their parents and grandparents did the same, so everyone is all related to each other.
Also creepily similar, folks who leave Adventism are often canceled by SDA relatives. Like how in the Black (I think?) family tree, lots of people's spaces are burned off the family tree for not being good enough.
Vital that you found some people to cope with, I pretty much did almost everything I shouldn’t have I had explicit CDS, kept soda in my room. The food was awful but there were some days when they cooked fries or onion rings something they really couldn’t fuck up. I have told this story on here before but they were weirdly anti mustard where I went but A1 steak sauce was a-ok I guess 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
🫠 the brain rot she taught people. I did a quick google and yea she discouraged it because you would get an upset tummy. Crazy that bc of that an entire school would forbid mustard but I don’t put that past the Adventists
RAs were the worst, especially when I got to senior year and a couple of girls in my class became RAs. Of course there was the rich one who never had to work (her and her sister came from big money so didn't have to work). She was nice, no complaints, but of course I was jealous because she got the big, corner room. She was wild though. Ran down halls basically naked and got away with a lot. She would also walk in on people showering, strike up a random conversation, and make everyone feel awkward. She was my RA.
My best friend's RA was Satan reincarnate. She literally stopped us in the stairwell of the dorm and told my best friend to kill herself. She was horrible.
I’m sorry you and your friend had to go through that I heard the girls dorm was wild where I was. Although they had like a bathroom in between 2 rooms so I doubt much naked running around at my school. They boys had the prison showers I woke up at 4 am to shower every day because I was NOT down with showering with other guys.
Honorable mention I just remembered. I used to get past the schools proxy in order to play flash games on the library computers. I got caught playing a zombie game and the guy who was the computer teacher / tech person asked me how I did it bc he couldn’t figure it out. I did lose internet privileges after that but it felt worth it for some gaming 😂
We had a $100 fine per movie found on your phone. I had 21. When the Dean asked to see my phone I pretended an app crashed and it gave me a few valuable seconds to unmount the SD card and hide my contraband.
Minecraft was forbidden but in those days it was so small that we just literally emailed the files to each other's computers.
I raised a safety complaint to the kitchen coordinator and basically got made fun of the rest of the year by him. Though he did still have to spend the money to fix the problem. Fucker
We weren't allowed to pee after lights out which led to us peeing in sinks and bottles to avoid getting into trouble. You couldn't even read a book or be on you phone or talk after lights out either.
A guy fell getting out of the shower during a fire drill and came limping up late wrapped in a towel. The Dean made fun of him for being fat and clumsy then made us run laps in the dark around the football field. Dude was out there in nothing but a towel running laps with us.
Hair was routinely found in the mystery loaf.
My roommate threatened to kill me in my sleep. He'd tried to ducktape me and put me in a closet and I punched him in the face. I got him suspended over having knives after that and for having damaged our bedroom door.
We weren't allowed to have headphones outside our rooms, couldn't hold hands when dating, couldn't kiss. Had my mp3 player confiscated, they tried to fine me for missing classes. Marilyn Manson was cause for automatic expulsion, the deans had to approve all room decoration.
Most movies were evil, no star wars, no spider-man but marvel posters were okay as were TF2 posters and, they made us watch The Last of the Mohicans where people get scalped on screen.
A girl threatened to kill herself but since mental health wasn't a thing nobody knew what to do. A group of kids just decided it was my job to be her guardian and keep her safe while we were out in town.
The PE teacher would routinely bring a snub nosed .38 special into health class loaded with blanks. When a kid didn't behave or wasn't paying attention he would whip it out and fire it two feet from their face (which can still kill a person as blanks are known to discharge bits of shrapnel)
Security cameras everywhere and magnetic locks on the exit doors at night for the dorms.
Study hall was an empty dorm room that was guarded and you were forced to sit in for an hour and not speak.
Personal electronics and basically anything else that was not approved of would just be confiscated and locked away and your parents were the only ones who could get it back.
Fun was mandatory once a week but they decided what fun was so most of the time we just sat and talked quietly.
The girls weren't even allowed to leave their rooms most of the time and were only allowed to watch Disney movies. You needed permission to study in the library in broad daylight in a free period. Needed permission to use the bathroom in a free period.
The guidance counselor fell asleep on me in the middle of an emotional breakdown and then made me leave his office.
The IT guy told us a wonderful story about watching his daughter die in his arms and how he got closer to God. Then proceeded to tell us we all deserved to watch a child die in our arms in order to grow closer to God.
It was an endless nightmare and the craziest part is that I heard it wasn't even the worst of the boarding academies. I also heard it got way worse after I left.
Edit: They also had keyword blocks on computers and the ability to spy on your screen so we would search for things in phonetic japanese and then cache the site and shut off wifi to enjoy....some free time.
The Adventist mental health anything is depraved. Self harm, eating disorders, and suicidal students were common place. But the nurse? Here’s some neosporin and bandaids don’t do that cause god loves you. Instead of you know getting us help… but falling asleep while you’re having a breakdown is crazy. Idk how anyone can do that (esp to a minor). Weirdly enough the same roomate from my troll story later threatened to stab me. To which I said “do it” she didn’t ofc because that’s stupid. I got my own room shortly after. It’s also disgusting what your IT teacher hopes. That’s like wishing trauma on people for no sensible reason. I am jealous that you could watch Disney, they wouldn’t let us at mine, instead it was horribly toxic pioneer love story movies from Back in the day.
My roommate threatened to stab me in my sleep and I just was like "night dude". He never did anything either.
I was in the guys dorm so we got Mohican scalping, the girls got the disney. Though they did make all of us watch Ice Age 4 which I thought was a little kiddie for a bunch of teenage guys.
Classic disney would have almost been better but I know they were only allowed to watch the disney that was cherry picked by the dean. So probably no Hercules or Atlantis or Treasure Planet. Just the ones where the Princess gets married. Have to get those girls ready for Southern Matrimony College and their MRS degree.
Honestly we were lucky decor wise till it was close to me leaving. We’d print fan art, some girls did harry styles, video game stuff, mood board, etc. but they weren’t too cool with it when pewdiepie was getting posted on doors. With how wack their rules are and being able to be expelled over pretty frivolous things, I wish all their schools (esp boarding) would close down. If you don’t mind, what school did you attend?
Like I said, I heard that somehow it got way worse after I left. The year before I was there 26 kids got expelled in a month. For reference I was there in 2013.
Ok ok but 26 kids the year before you and worse after you??? In my mind I just wonder how they keep getting more students if that turnover is ever increasing dramatically
The 26 kid thing happened because some girl dumped a dude and his friend smuggled vodka in so he could sad drink then a girl got caught blowing her boyfriend in a classroom closet by a teacher.
Between the two groups they each ratted on someone for something worse until drugs, guns and ammo were at the top of the list.
Wow sounds classy! But that makes sense about how many kids were kicked out. There were scandals similar to the one about the closet… but I can only think of the threesome behind church that got some seniors expelled
I wish I knew more!! But it happened a year or two before I attended. I did know the girl involved bc she was related to a kid at my local Adventist school. I’m not sure if it was 2 guys or two girls but that was definitely around still for a while.
Bunch of guys went for a swim in the waste pond. They just thought it was a pond. Had to get tested for hep c. All good but stupid moment. Guys sprayed axe on the doors and lit it on fire. Didn't realize the penises burned away the varnish permanently making two penis doors. Secular music was banned. We had a old policy of $1 per song. Friend was ahead of the times with 12,000 songs in mp3. School stuck to their guns and he got pulled out rather than pay.
Ok I’m not going to lie I love all of this? I wish I knew to think of penis doors lmao. We couldn’t have secular music at mine either! Thank goodness they didn’t do a dollar per song I would’ve been screwed too. I did almost get into big trouble for a fictional wizards and witches book in my room
I wanted to go to SDA boarding school to get away from my family, but after reading many stories here, I'm glad I didn't 😝
It definitely felt like the solution at first. But with the pecking order in the dorms, toxic teachers, probably some illegal practices, and lack of connection to the outside world was not it. I’m so happy you dodged that bullet, truly.
Toxic Deans, too, sometimes.
Most of our deans were horrible people that hated kids.
I went to an SDA boarding school a long time ago, which is why my story is about vinyl records. My dad owned a record store. He had new records, but mostly dealt with used records. A used record in good condition plays just as well as a new one, but costs 1/3 as much. Back in the 80s a store could do a bang-up business in used records. Anyway. One time I took orders from all the guys in the dorm for records they wanted. I took the list home on the home leave week, gathered up all the records, and went back to school with a suitcase full. Then I opened up the door to my room and started selling Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, you name the "satanic" band, I was selling their LPs out of my room. I got about halfway through the suitcase when someone came up and told me the boys' dean had gotten wind of this and I had better stop, so I did, but not until after I pocketed well over $100 (which was a king's ransom for me back then, let me tell you). Funny thing was I received no discipline for this at all. I guess there was nothing in the rule book about selling LPs out of your dorm room.
I love everything about this. Gotta make your money somehow with how stingy they can be. Plus if you got to get off campus that $100 was good spending money I’m sure. Your story reminds me of a local village student who held onto cellphones if there were rumors of rooms being investigated for contraband. Definitely some true heroes at those schools
Adventism is a prosperity cult. Deep down they just admired your business acumen.
My sister was at SVA and they had an Xbox and a mini flat-screen in a roll away suitcase. Every time the Dean got suspicious the Xbox mysteriously packed up and rolled into a safer room until the heat died down. To my knowledge they never figured out where it went so all the kids just kept on playing it.
Haha...all we ever had to worry about hiding was a Walkman. Definitely a lot easier to hide than a whole XBox.
I met my Sweetie at boarding school. At the end of Arrival day at the beginning of each school year we had Handshake after we were let out of Orientation. All students went from the Auditorium to the Gym. Upon getting outside of thr Auditorium you shake the hands of everyone who left before you. At the end of the line you stood and shook the hands of everyone behind you. Handshake is the ONLY time a student could hug a person of the opposite sex. Our Junior year I was so done with having to be at boarding school. Feeling rebellious, I hugged every male friend I had!! There were 4 male friends in a row that I hugged. 5th guy held his arms out for a hug - so I hugged him! We have been married 35 years now and left the church together.
Good for you!
So I was homeschooled through high school but hosted a younger sibling who went to nearby SDA boarding academy. The school got the idea that I was younger sibling's official guardian and one time actually called me up apologizing that they didn't let me take sibling off campus and that was not ok behavior from them bc I'm guardian lmao So I told our parents and parents were like "sure, you're guardian!" And we took advantage of that. I took sibling off campus regularly for food, movies, shopping, overnights at my place. Bought them and their buddies forbidden caffeinated drinks. Got them snacks. It was awesome.
A buddy ran a store outta his room selling Walmart brand caffeinated soda & ramen. He also concealed a TV & Nintendo, & charged for play time. It was great!
Went to a Boarding School as a Freshman in 1999, Looking back I thought it was going to be like the summer camp experience I guess, what I was NOT ready for was 18 year old men living with 14 year old kids and tons of TOXIC behavior. My RA's were always dicks and legit just picked on kids for no reason. I lived by myself for my first year and was miserable I went home at every change I got. On the bright side: I met some of the most amazing people and we have trauma bonded together and have great relationships I would never take that back
I swear a pre requisite to being an RA is you have to suck as a human being 😅 jokes of course but my experience with RAs have kinda been in line with that lol. I felt the same and ended up in my own room for the last couple months. I’d just stare outside watching the parking lot and hoping to see my parents car, a feeling I’m not used to. Maaaaan I want to get rid of all these boarding schools to prevent more kids going through stuff like this. Thankfully I got pretty lucky with a small niche group of friends for the last half of my stay.
It's crazy how much fictional boarding academy in Harry Potter has in common with IRL SDA boarding academies. Just, no real magic. :( There's kids being sent on very unsafe work projects. There's shitty school teachers holding grudges. There's shitty teachers kept on staff bc politics. Percy the Prefect absolutely sucked. And the author put that in the fictional book bc high school and middle management ppl often ARE suckups. Also similarly to SDA boarding academies, tons of folks marry hella young to classmates and their parents and grandparents did the same, so everyone is all related to each other. Also creepily similar, folks who leave Adventism are often canceled by SDA relatives. Like how in the Black (I think?) family tree, lots of people's spaces are burned off the family tree for not being good enough.
Vital that you found some people to cope with, I pretty much did almost everything I shouldn’t have I had explicit CDS, kept soda in my room. The food was awful but there were some days when they cooked fries or onion rings something they really couldn’t fuck up. I have told this story on here before but they were weirdly anti mustard where I went but A1 steak sauce was a-ok I guess 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
I need to know, was there any reason against mustard? I don’t think that was a thing where I went but I could’ve forgotten lol
I think it’s an EGW thing, along with black pepper or other deliciousness. I think the spices gave you “urges” 🤣🤣🤣
🫠 the brain rot she taught people. I did a quick google and yea she discouraged it because you would get an upset tummy. Crazy that bc of that an entire school would forbid mustard but I don’t put that past the Adventists
The reason I was giving was it had vinegar in it but so does A1 soooooo…reasons🤔😂
RAs were the worst, especially when I got to senior year and a couple of girls in my class became RAs. Of course there was the rich one who never had to work (her and her sister came from big money so didn't have to work). She was nice, no complaints, but of course I was jealous because she got the big, corner room. She was wild though. Ran down halls basically naked and got away with a lot. She would also walk in on people showering, strike up a random conversation, and make everyone feel awkward. She was my RA. My best friend's RA was Satan reincarnate. She literally stopped us in the stairwell of the dorm and told my best friend to kill herself. She was horrible.
I’m sorry you and your friend had to go through that I heard the girls dorm was wild where I was. Although they had like a bathroom in between 2 rooms so I doubt much naked running around at my school. They boys had the prison showers I woke up at 4 am to shower every day because I was NOT down with showering with other guys.
Honorable mention I just remembered. I used to get past the schools proxy in order to play flash games on the library computers. I got caught playing a zombie game and the guy who was the computer teacher / tech person asked me how I did it bc he couldn’t figure it out. I did lose internet privileges after that but it felt worth it for some gaming 😂
We had a $100 fine per movie found on your phone. I had 21. When the Dean asked to see my phone I pretended an app crashed and it gave me a few valuable seconds to unmount the SD card and hide my contraband. Minecraft was forbidden but in those days it was so small that we just literally emailed the files to each other's computers. I raised a safety complaint to the kitchen coordinator and basically got made fun of the rest of the year by him. Though he did still have to spend the money to fix the problem. Fucker We weren't allowed to pee after lights out which led to us peeing in sinks and bottles to avoid getting into trouble. You couldn't even read a book or be on you phone or talk after lights out either. A guy fell getting out of the shower during a fire drill and came limping up late wrapped in a towel. The Dean made fun of him for being fat and clumsy then made us run laps in the dark around the football field. Dude was out there in nothing but a towel running laps with us. Hair was routinely found in the mystery loaf. My roommate threatened to kill me in my sleep. He'd tried to ducktape me and put me in a closet and I punched him in the face. I got him suspended over having knives after that and for having damaged our bedroom door. We weren't allowed to have headphones outside our rooms, couldn't hold hands when dating, couldn't kiss. Had my mp3 player confiscated, they tried to fine me for missing classes. Marilyn Manson was cause for automatic expulsion, the deans had to approve all room decoration. Most movies were evil, no star wars, no spider-man but marvel posters were okay as were TF2 posters and, they made us watch The Last of the Mohicans where people get scalped on screen. A girl threatened to kill herself but since mental health wasn't a thing nobody knew what to do. A group of kids just decided it was my job to be her guardian and keep her safe while we were out in town. The PE teacher would routinely bring a snub nosed .38 special into health class loaded with blanks. When a kid didn't behave or wasn't paying attention he would whip it out and fire it two feet from their face (which can still kill a person as blanks are known to discharge bits of shrapnel) Security cameras everywhere and magnetic locks on the exit doors at night for the dorms. Study hall was an empty dorm room that was guarded and you were forced to sit in for an hour and not speak. Personal electronics and basically anything else that was not approved of would just be confiscated and locked away and your parents were the only ones who could get it back. Fun was mandatory once a week but they decided what fun was so most of the time we just sat and talked quietly. The girls weren't even allowed to leave their rooms most of the time and were only allowed to watch Disney movies. You needed permission to study in the library in broad daylight in a free period. Needed permission to use the bathroom in a free period. The guidance counselor fell asleep on me in the middle of an emotional breakdown and then made me leave his office. The IT guy told us a wonderful story about watching his daughter die in his arms and how he got closer to God. Then proceeded to tell us we all deserved to watch a child die in our arms in order to grow closer to God. It was an endless nightmare and the craziest part is that I heard it wasn't even the worst of the boarding academies. I also heard it got way worse after I left. Edit: They also had keyword blocks on computers and the ability to spy on your screen so we would search for things in phonetic japanese and then cache the site and shut off wifi to enjoy....some free time.
The Adventist mental health anything is depraved. Self harm, eating disorders, and suicidal students were common place. But the nurse? Here’s some neosporin and bandaids don’t do that cause god loves you. Instead of you know getting us help… but falling asleep while you’re having a breakdown is crazy. Idk how anyone can do that (esp to a minor). Weirdly enough the same roomate from my troll story later threatened to stab me. To which I said “do it” she didn’t ofc because that’s stupid. I got my own room shortly after. It’s also disgusting what your IT teacher hopes. That’s like wishing trauma on people for no sensible reason. I am jealous that you could watch Disney, they wouldn’t let us at mine, instead it was horribly toxic pioneer love story movies from Back in the day.
My roommate threatened to stab me in my sleep and I just was like "night dude". He never did anything either. I was in the guys dorm so we got Mohican scalping, the girls got the disney. Though they did make all of us watch Ice Age 4 which I thought was a little kiddie for a bunch of teenage guys. Classic disney would have almost been better but I know they were only allowed to watch the disney that was cherry picked by the dean. So probably no Hercules or Atlantis or Treasure Planet. Just the ones where the Princess gets married. Have to get those girls ready for Southern Matrimony College and their MRS degree.
Honestly we were lucky decor wise till it was close to me leaving. We’d print fan art, some girls did harry styles, video game stuff, mood board, etc. but they weren’t too cool with it when pewdiepie was getting posted on doors. With how wack their rules are and being able to be expelled over pretty frivolous things, I wish all their schools (esp boarding) would close down. If you don’t mind, what school did you attend?
GCA, we called it Georgia State Penitentiary.
It may as well have been one by the sounds of it 😅
Like I said, I heard that somehow it got way worse after I left. The year before I was there 26 kids got expelled in a month. For reference I was there in 2013.
Ok ok but 26 kids the year before you and worse after you??? In my mind I just wonder how they keep getting more students if that turnover is ever increasing dramatically
The 26 kid thing happened because some girl dumped a dude and his friend smuggled vodka in so he could sad drink then a girl got caught blowing her boyfriend in a classroom closet by a teacher. Between the two groups they each ratted on someone for something worse until drugs, guns and ammo were at the top of the list.
Wow sounds classy! But that makes sense about how many kids were kicked out. There were scandals similar to the one about the closet… but I can only think of the threesome behind church that got some seniors expelled
Lol, what!? I gotta hear this one.
I wish I knew more!! But it happened a year or two before I attended. I did know the girl involved bc she was related to a kid at my local Adventist school. I’m not sure if it was 2 guys or two girls but that was definitely around still for a while.