The party was wilder than they’d expected. Girls clad in sheer negligees and lacy bustiers floated around the room, grinding lustily with each other. Loud hip-hop music drowned out games of beer pong while frat boys traded keg stands in the corner. Dave had gone to some parties in high school, but Wayne was new to the scene, and getting comfortable took three or four cups of a beverage he’d never heard of (“jungle juice,” was it?).

After an hour of drinking, Dave and Wayne were feeling loose enough to unveil their big surprise: two pairs of special underwear, purchased in advance for the occasion. Dave stripped down to a black man-thong, and Wayne, a bit more reserved, wore a pair of SpongeBob SquarePants boxers. They drank and danced and cavorted with the secular students until the wee hours, using Dave’s digital camera to snap the photos he would eventually post, for posterity, on his MySpace profile.

That was the fatal step, of course, and no one can quite understand why Dave didn’t think twice before documenting his sins online. Did he really think his secrets were safe on the Internet? Was he trying to get kicked out?

These are the questions that have circulated the halls of our dorm for the past week, ever since Dave got busted. By now, we’ve heard all the stories. We’ve heard how, a few days after the party, Dave found an urgent e-mail from the Dean of Men waiting in his inbox. How, when he was brought in to the Dean’s office, Dave tried to make the case that he hadn’t been at the party. How the Dean had pulled from his desk a stack of photos, culled from Dave’s MySpace page, that proved otherwise. How some of the photos had been shockingly lewd, including one of Dave in his man-thong, holding a bottle of liquor in each hand while looking up a girl’s skirt. How Dave had broken maybe half the rules in The Liberty Way, including “Attendance at a dance,” “Sexual misconduct and/or any state of undress,” and “Possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages.” How he was served with the biggest punishment on our hall – and maybe at Liberty – all year: 78 reprimands, a $650 fine, and 30 hours of community service. How, at that point, adding up Dave’s punishments was a matter of procedure, like sentencing a serial killer to 23 consecutive life sentences, because the alcohol alone was enough to expel him.

In short, the guy needs a lot of prayer.

After rising from my knees, I walk to Dave’s room. He’s in there with Wayne and a few other friends, still discussing his Dean’s Office debacle. Dave is still waiting for the official news of his punishment, but he seems to have made peace with the fact that, barring a miracle, he’ll be gone by next week.

“I should have done more bad stuff while I was at it,” Dave says, chuckling as he picks at a bag of Jiffy-Pop. “I mean, they can’t kick me out twice, right? I could have snorted some coke or something.”

“Come on, Dave,” says Joey, a Jersey-born freshman who lives at the end of the hall. “At least try to be serious about this.”