re: Tiger Stadium Dorms

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He had the room to himself after his roomie's parents nevet even unpacked him after getting one look at it

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Ha-ha, I had a roommate refugee I never saw... I also lived in my room for a semester " on sabbatical " and not enrolled, and nobody noticed

Pastime pizza

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I lived in North Stadium, top floor, I think 5th floor. It was 1982, my sophomore year. I guess because it was near the end of the life of these dorms they weren't very crowded. All concrete walls. The rooms were made for more than 2 students but was just me and my roommate. We had lots of room. Was great on game days to hang out the roll out windows and yell down to girls walking around on game day with our speakers in the window blaring RUSH. We provided entertainment for early arriving students who started to cue up in line to get into stadium for games. Only had to show ID to get into student section. Some wild times in those cue lines for a couple of hours before entry. A good time was had by all in those simpler times. Worst part was when it got cold we froze to death on north end of stadium with north wind blowing and the windows wouldn't close all the way. We stuffed wet towels in the cracks and the towels would freeze in the cracks. Steam heat and physical plant had some policy that you had to have so many days in a row below freezing before they would crank up steam units (at least that was what they told us). Very seldom did we have steam heat and regulating it was impossible. We had to move our cars out of the parking lot west of the stadium where the Athletic offices are now located by Friday morning because on Fridays the tailgate RVs started showing up and we had to move for big donors to park in their undesignated, first come first serve parking spots. We had to move our cars to vet school and hoof it back to the dorm. That west parking lot was a commuter parking lot during the week. Fond memories. I only stayed that one year so I don't know when they ceased having them occupied but I don't think too much longer.

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I lived across the street in Hatcher Hall in 1982. Our rooms were palaces in comparison. I watched all those old people show up in their RV's on Friday nights. I still want to be like them when I retire.

My screen name, Stadium Rat, also derives from my time in the Stadium dorms. Occupants in North Stadium were called North Stadium Rats, because they were freshmen and outcasts.

I claim the longest tenure of any stadium occupant at 12 consecutive semesters (minus summers when they were closed). 5 years as an undergrad, 1 year in Law School. The last 10 semesters were in 501 East Stadium. That's all the way to the top and all the way south. I had a window that overlooked the South Stadium concourse.

Another window opened out to Hatcher, etc. During football season for home games, I would make a point to be in my room on Friday nights. That's when the visiting team would come to the stadium for walk-throughs. Their busses would unload right under my window. I took it as my solemn duty as a Tiger to "welcome" them properly.

I would blare Tiger Band music out the window and yell Tiger Bait at them. I was very loud. My best memory is for the 1979 USC game. As the Trojans were getting off the bus, I saw Coach John Robinson gesture towards my window. I can only imagine he was warning his guys that there would be 75 thousand more fans just like me in the stadium the next night.

My first week in North Stadium, 1976 (I think maybe room 545) LSU got a new Mike the Tiger. I heard him roar as soon as he got settled in.

I viewed the stadium rooms as "quaint" and I knew I'd always have a story to tell. The NS rooms were single person rooms that had been designed as 3 person rooms, so they were roomy. The bunk beds had been removed. 501 East was directly beneath a ramp for fans inside the stadium. There was a drain pipe that started directly over my bed and went down the corner of the room. Part of the ceiling was slanted because of the ramp.

There was a single phone in the hall for the 15 residents of the floor. Later they added some other phones so that it was only 5 residents sharing each phone.

We once had a resident that was dealing hash out of his room. I was friends with his brother who also lived in ES, but on a different floor. One day I looked into his room and his brother was there so I stepped in. The dude had over a hundred grams of hash on full display with his door open! About a week later, he had traded the hash for 2 speakers, each of which was big enough to live in. Then the noise started. He had to keep the stereo dial at a minimum, because the speakers were so efficient he couldn't use more than about 2 watts. This guy would play his music at rock concert level any damn time of the day or night. Luckily for us, the circuit breaker was in my section of the hallway. When he started blasting, I'd flip his breaker so he would have to come all the way into our hall to reset it. It only took about 3 times before he realized he couldn't win. Problem solved. The guy later got caught with a gun and was expelled.

Ah good times!

Depends on which section. N Stadium was mostly freshmen (this is in the mid- to late 60s) and it was a zoo. S Stadium was upperclassmen, fairly civilized, pretty nice rooms, and generally a nice dorm. I lived in S Stadium in the 68-69 academic year and found it to be pretty nice, as dorms went in that era.

Lot of good stories here! Would love to see some old photos of these dorms back in the day.

North Stadium in 1980 had the strangest collection of misfits. There was one guy from Pennsylvania who worked at the East Stadium Snack Bar. He racked up a bunch of gambling and drug debts in the dorm. So, he quit his job at the snack bar, waited ONE DAY, then broke into the place and robbed it. He got about $100 in quarters from the washers and dryers, paid off some of his debts and then completely vanished... in the middle of the semester. Obviously, he was the number one suspect, but he disappeared and was never heard from again.

One night, three guys with some tools snuck over to the LSU police station across the street. They stole a complete light bar off the top of an LSU PD squad car. They unbolted it from the car, snipped the wires and carried it back to their North Stadium room. Somehow, the LSU PD figured out that the thieves were from North Stadium, so a few days later they stormed the dorm and strip-searched each room until they found the light bar hidden under someone's bed. The guys were expelled, and charges were probably pressed, but we never heard the complete follow-up.

Here's a good one. There was an RA who everybody severely hated. He drove a yellow Volkswagon Beetle, and he always parked it on the street outside the dorm, across from Mike's cage. One guy who had been busted by the RA worked at the LSU driving range, and he brought a couple of buckets of range balls back to his room one day. This psycho and his room mates broke out some wrist rockets in the middle of the night and started blasting the RA's car with golf balls from their dorm window. They broke out ALL of the glass, both headlights, and dented it all to hell. The chrome strips on the side pannels even flew off. They absolutely destroyed that car, and I don't think they were ever caught.

I could go on and on for hours with weird stories from that place. It was an experience.

I would visit friends in the mid 80's who lived there...the rooms were pretty bland but a lot of fun! card games and beer

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I'm pretty sure I was the leader of the guys that worked in the East Stadium laundry about then. I was the guy that went to the Bursar's Office to get fresh change each week. I don't have any memory of this. Not saying it didn't happen, I just don't remember it. Was this when they had a person working behind a real snack counter, or just a student making change for the machines?

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Oh, it happened. It was the spring semester of 1981. The snack bar was open and manned by a surly rude guy whose eyes pointed off in a different direction from where he was looking. He sold chips, drinks, cigarettes... snack bar stuff. You had to walk through the snack bar to get to the laundry room.