I asked those in the BuzzFeed Community who've worked on campus what their most bizarre experience was, and they did not hold back.
1. "I was a desk attendant on the night shift when a guy came in and announced he was glad the school was putting 'young tender girls' at the desk again. I motioned for my coworker to hit the panic button and he laughed and said 'I can see you hitting your little button.' Then this take-no-shit old lady security guard came up from nowhere with her cane, jabbed it at him hard, and told him to GTFO. He did. God bless old ladies."
2. "I was the resident director on-call for a knife-wielding ghost incident. Three students living together, each with an individual bedroom but shared living space. One woke up to a knife that had been shoved under her door, claimed that the other two had put it there, but they said it was a ghost haunting her because of how evil she was. No one wanted to leave to stay somewhere else because that would be 'admitting wrongdoing' in their minds."
—Anonymous
3. "I was an RA in upper-class housing. I had a resident complain to me that one of their roommates got a dog without acquiring permission to have one first. Well, I investigated and it turns out not only did the roommate bring a dog into the dorm, but the dog lived on the tiny balcony, was being fed Lucky Charms, and was not house trained at all."
4. "I was a psychology TA for my psychology professor in my freshman year and one of the students tried flirting and sleeping with me to get his grade up..."
5. "So, there was this one time I was a TA and the professor of the course was like, 'hey, you’re in charge of the final, it’s a debate, they’re in groups, everyone loves group work.' This was fine in and of itself. Got to create all the documents and get them approved. No big deal. On the day of the debate, over Zoom, a group literally started fighting with each other in the comment section of Zoom thinking it was private. It was not."
6. "I was a student assistant for the main dean's office for two years. I got to witness a lot of staff conflicts and deal with angry students daily. The worst was when a group of female grad students was being harassed by a tenure physics professor. He would drop in on them in the lab and try to offer them private tutoring or positions within his research group. He would blast their emails with 'encouraging' comments and praise for being minorities in the dept (of mostly men)."
"Just a major red flag, but he was 'an esteemed professor.' Untouchable. Things took a turn when he was caught following one of the girls home on public transit. She had enough evidence to file a restraining order, but that didn't stop him from being a creep. Ultimately, the four grad students either transferred out of the dept or left the school altogether. But that f**king guy didn't have to deal with any blowback. Got to leave quietly and got a position at another university."
—Anonymous
7. "Worked in the library of my university. I don’t remember exactly how but I became acquainted with this guy who came in a lot and always wanted to chat with me. Wasn’t my type but it didn’t really bother me. Then I was informed by a coworker that he was married, which meant he must take his ring off whenever he would come talk to me. One day, I was working in the stacks when he came to chat. Because the lower levels were partially underground and my cart was behind me, I was cornered and I was very uncomfortable."
"That day I talked to my boss who sent an email asking him to keep a professional relationship with his workers who felt uncomfortable with the situation in the stacks, and I figured it would be done. The next day as I walked past the office to clock in for my shift, I see the guy and my boss through the giant window. The guy was screaming at my boss (open ceiling so I could hear it all) and I dropped to the floor before he could see me.
I hid behind the door in the break room until the coast was clear, but you could hear that man screaming until he left the library. After that, I was absolutely terrified to work in the stacks, and eventually ended up in a desk position, though I never saw him again."
—Anonymous
8. "I worked at the school library for a few semesters. The amount of times I caught people making out or having sex in the stacks was ridiculous. The craziest one was when a couple got too into it and broke a few shelves and all the books fell on them. That shit was heard all throughout the library. That guy so was desperately trying to hide his hard-on with some books. He acted like he was seriously injured, but really the girl was and actually needed stitches on her head. Fun times having to resort all those books."
—Anonymous
9. "I worked as a tutor in the library and caught a student masturbating to porn on one of the computers. He had a view of the entire floor except for my room which was right behind him with a giant wall of windows."
10. "I'm a female and I worked for public safety where I would lock up buildings, kick people out who shouldn’t be there, and provide walking escorts home for anyone who called our number. I was walking back to campus one night after walking someone home when a guy stopped me and asked for an escort home. I asked for his first name and where he was going so I could let the police dispatcher know. He refused to tell me his first name and pointed in the opposite direction of where he said he was going."
"I got uneasy and slowly backed away while trying to get his name. He didn’t understand why I needed to talk to my dispatcher and tried to get me to walk with him. While I was backing up again, he reached out at me and tried to grab me. I have never run so fast in my life. That job was not worth the lack of sleep from working overnights and being paid $12/hour."
11. "I was bitten by a mouse while working as an office worker in an administrative building. The department had recently moved to one of the oldest buildings on campus and we had been warned not to keep our bags on the floor because of spiders and mice. One day, when everyone was at lunch and I was the only person on the first floor, I felt something tickling my toe. I was more freaked out that something was touching me when I was supposedly alone."
12. "I worked in our Financial Aid office and a student came in wanting to add a loan to her account. We took a look at the document she brought in and realized it was a scam. Since it was just us student workers manning the front desk at that time, we couldn’t tell her why we couldn’t take it and she threw a fit."
"Her counselor came back from the meeting they were in and explained to her why we couldn’t take the 'loan' she got online and that she needed to contact her bank. It was pretty awful to watch her realize she had been scammed."
13. And finally, "I work in student engagement. Part of what we do is help fund student organizations. One of these organizations provides menstrual products in campus bathrooms, free of charge to students and staff. They did get some money through fundraising and from student engagement. We had a community member write a whole article and complain to student government that student fees paid by men going towards period products is the same as actual slavery."
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.