Hi, Mysterious.
When I was filling out the paperwork for college (with my JW mother looking over my shoulder--this was before I'd come out), there was a space on the dorm app for "religious affiliation." So of course, to keep my mother happy, I wrote "Jehovah's Witness."
What I didn't know was that the dorm directors contacted the nearest church for students and let them know you were in the dorm and gave out your phone number. So about a week after I landed at school, I got a call from one of the elders. Now he was obviously very uncomfortable--and more than a little skeptical. I remember him saying something like "Are you really a Witness? Because we've never had a Witness go to ____ University." And I was freaked--there go all my carefully laid plans to never set foot in a Kingdom Hall again! As I was eighteen years old and very naive, it never occurred to me that I didn't have to treat Mr. Brother Elder with all due respect.
So I'm hemming and hawing--and all the while terrified that, if they know where I am, they'll call my mother--something I was very justified in fearing. Finally, I said "Well, you know, it's really my mother that's a Witness. I've just been to a few meetings." (Theocratic war strategy, I guess! since I'd been to my first meeting three days after my birth, and thereafter three days a week for eighteen years).
He called a couple of times after that, too, trying to arrange to pick me up for meetings, but I just had my roommate answer the phone for a couple of months. He must have figured I wasn't really a Witness anyway, and just let it go. After all, this was 1978--and they'd "never had a Witness go to ____ University." In 1978, the local elders in my congregation were still encouraging JW teens to drop out of school and get a GED so they could pioneer unimpeded.
So, words of advice from one who's been there: do all you can to make sure that your contact information at school is kept private. If your mother tells them where you are (and mine's done this a couple of times--written a letter that sicced the local congregation on me), have your roommate answer the phone or get an answering machine and screen calls. They won't be able to actually get into the dorm to see you if you don't give permission--they'll get stopped at the desk (or at least that's been the case at all the universities I've attended and taught at).
And never, never, never put "Jehovah's Witness" down as your religion on any form. I didn't realize at the time how dangerous that was--if something had happened to me, the university, acting in loco parentis, would have undoubtedly called my clergy of choice, and then I'd have had the damn elders at the hospital.
Best,
Jankyn
