Tommy Engebretson entered his freshman year excited to get a taste of college life.

“I got here and I felt at home,” he said.

He moved into Lourdes Hall last August. On the first day of orientation week, he was already inviting a gaggle of new friends back to his room to hang out.

Two months later, and he was already making plans to move out.

The problem wasn’t the dorm itself. Engebretson loved his new lifestyle. He loved being independent from his parents, being in charge of his own schedule and seeing up to thirty people he knew just walking down the hallways of Lourdes Hall.

The problem was noise. Not that Lourdes Hall was too loud for Engebretson—Engebretson was too loud for Lourdes Hall.

Engebretson, self-described as “loud and obnoxious,” was constantly getting knocks and warnings from his Resident Assistant.

His explanation: “I’m a theater kid.”

Engebretson played the Lost Boy “Slightly Soiled” in last semester’s production of Peter Pan, and he did project nicely. However, his noise complaints came as a result of rollicking social eruptions behind the door of his room. He and his friends were always laughing out loud and listening to noisy music.

One Saturday night last semester, Engebretson and his friends got a warning knock from Engebretson’s Resident Assistant. Later, security came by and asked him to keep it down. After that, his Resident Assistant was back again with another complaint, followed shortly by another complaint by security: four door-knocks in one night.

The next day, Engebretson got online and started looking for a house off campus.

“I wanted to be able to control my own room,” he said.

Although he has never been written up for noise violations, Engebretson felt he didn’t need the added stress of the warnings. Most of the time, he said, they have just been the result of bad luck.

“It is excessive,” he said. “I get that they have a job to do. But the reason they knocked that time is because they walked around at the wrong time. Someone laughed a little louder than usual.”

Engebretson found a house three blocks from campus to share with five friends—a fairly quick and painless process in October. He found the house to be in “surprisingly” good condition, and he was fairly certain the college seniors living downstairs would be making far more noise than him.

He signed on to rent the top two floors for $395 a month starting in June, when he moves in. His parents, he said, will help him make ends meet—for a while.

In order to move into the house this summer and attain the independence Engebretson dreamed of when he came to college, he is applying for jobs and hoping to be hired for two.

The open personality that won him friendships in his first few weeks of college, he said, may come in handy in winning tips.

All of this will be happening while he is pursuing a major in mass communication and a potential minor in theater.