College dorm roomie's date sleeping over

In My Humble Opinion
81

Innocent mistakes do happen. If someone wanted to mess with someone, changing batteries around is the absolute least harassing thing they could have come up with. Sure, it might possibly have been intentional but, whether it was or not, saying so makes you and your son sound paranoid.

Maybe you want to blow up over something inconsequential either way, but if that’s your reaction to something like this,your son needs to ask someone who’s a little more realistic for advice. You’re doing him no favors by encouraging him to get worked up over something so trivial.

Pick your battles. If you go psycho over this, you’ve already lost… and the worst part is the roommate may have done it innocently, whether you choose to accept it as a possibility or not.

82

That would be evil. Which is being said with some amount of admiration.

83

Pretty immature even if it is effective.

I know pranks get pulled in college–hell, I helped some friends tin foil a guy’s room while he was on break (I think they even went so far as to do individual sheets of paper in his printer–I wish I’d seen the final product). And yes, privacy is already compromised. But inviting your girlfriend to practically move in without even asking the guy you’re sharing a room with if he’s okay with it is still fucking rude.

(The calculator thing is minor though. Don’t stress over it. It’s aggravating, but as far as messing with your roommate’s stuff goes that’s too small to even bother mentioning. That stuff happens–as long as it’s harmless, just take it in stride.)

ETA: Do recall that this is only a month into his freshman year. Different people are accustomed to different levels of personal space, and for all we know just having a roommate at all is a major change that he’s still adjusting to.

84

Sure, we cannot assign a probability of zero. And the batteries’ quantum state may have fluctuated such that they reconstituted in our universe in reverse order… :rolleyes:

No, of course the batteries are a minor thing, and in and of themselves not worth doing battle over. But when a disagreement is happening, minor things tend to assume greater significance. And if you discover one potential minor thing, you wonder what other ones you might not have noticed yet - or might come in the future. Not the way you want to - or should have to - live day after day.

When my kid was younger, he was bullied quite a bit. No need to get into that too much here - in years past I posted many a time about what I thought worked and did not work. And I readily acknowledge that - at least in my kid’s case - one of the reasons he was the object of bullies is because he allowed himself to be.

At the time I insisted that he not respond to provocation with physical force, rely on the authorities, and use his intelligence. With the passage of time, I wish he had popped a couple of kids quite early on.

In my mind, the roommate is being a bully. And my kid should not have to put up with it.

85

Set rules:

  1. For every night the roommate has the girl over, he has to spend a night elsewhere.
  2. No sleeping over the night before big exams and so forth (prearranged).

Roommate makes every effort to hook up your son with a nice girl, then everyone’s happy.

86

I’m a college senior, so I can speak with a little bit of authority (albeit I haven’t lived in a double for 2 years now).

Roommate is being a dick by having his girlfriend over without prior negotiation. However, son is also being a bit of a prude. Colleges are very ‘free’ places, and he needs to adapt to that. If he’s uncomfortable stripping down to his boxers in front of a girl (especially one that’s effectively his roommate), he needs to lose the inhibition. It’s really something most people are not going to care about.

I’m also not sure why son is having such a hard time deciding what to do. If roommate is unwilling to change, he can talk to the RA. Or he can decide it’s not worth it and put up with the girlfriend, and bitch about the situation to his friends. Or move in with his friends, find himself a girl/boyfriend, etc etc. There’s really not a wrong choice here. He’s in college now, he can decide his own course of action.

Oh, and getting pissed at having your batteries switched backwards in a calculator? :rolleyes: Go to anger management classes, please. Yeah, it’s a really stupid, annoying prank, and isn’t funny at all (tuna fish in a calculator is funny however). But really, it’s not worth getting upset about. At all.

87

All of this might be great as far as you’re concerned, but it’s not you that we’re talking about here. If it didn’t bother you to boink like rabbits in the Macy’s display window then that’s great. If you can have fun driving your friend around while he has sex next to you… OK. That’s weird, but whatever. My point is, not everone shares your opinions about privacy, and it doesn’t matter if they’re 18 or 40. His motives aren’t obscure at all. He wants some sort of compromise here. His roomate is being the selfish one if he’s the “You’re a prude, now deal with it” type of guy. Why should he think that he has all of the rights just because he wants to get his rocks off?

Good idea about the note - pasive aggressive, but funny. By the way, could the kid say something to the girl? She’s the one invading his space, after all.

88

How about:

She walks in.
Him: “Hi Jane (use the wrong name)”
She looks at him funny: “It’s Jennifer.”
Him: “Oh, yeah, sorry. I get you all confused. So will you sleeping over tonight.”
Her: No answer because she’s storming out the door.

Seriously though, he should just ask her why they never sleep at her place and go from there. For all she knows, the roommate has told her “sure it’s OK with him” and she doesn’t realize your kid is bothered. Maybe if she feels like she’s intruding she’ll stay less often.

89

You know, thinking about this a little more, most people are kind of saying that your son should learn to deal, and suck it up, because he needs to learn these skills for life, but thinking about my own life, I’ve only had a roommate once (who wasn’t my sister) in almost 20 years of living on my own, and I socialized pretty well without it. If having roommates and living in a dorm doesn’t work out for your son, I don’t think he would lose much by living alone. Some of us are not cut out to be co-habitating creatures. Especially if he has a history of being bullied, he might really need the comfort and safety of his own personal space. He can do his socializing outside of his living space.

90

Honestly, I think chances are good enough that the next roommate will be an improvement. Just like the real world, he can ask around the dorm to see if anyone knows someone is in the same situation, ie, needs a little bit more privacy. The RA can keep their ears open too. And IIRC your kid is engineering? so there are other engineering students around who might prefer, you know, the tamer lifestyle.

If this is the only real problem with the roommate, then I think your kid is perfectly capable of living happily in a double. I mean, every college has a different culture and I’m sure there are some colleges where your son would be considered a prudish freak by all involved. But I assume that this is not the type of school or program that your son is enrolled in.

91

The trend today in residential housing is to abandon the roommate concept - it’s not the 1940s and 1950s, where kids shared rooms with big bro or big sis before college. Most kids have always had their own rooms and even bathrooms, so rooming with someone is a completely foreign concept. So there are dorms with private rooms, or with enough space that the roommates don’t feel they’re living on top of each other.

The battery thing… did it fuck up his calculator? If so I can see him being pissed. If not, I’d say let it go. Don’t give the jackass roommate the satisfaction of knowing it bothered you.

There’s nothing prudish about expecting to be able to walk around in underwear, etc. without someone of the opposite sex seeing. Yes, it’s very cool and trendy to act like it doesn’t bother you - college freshmen, in particular, seem to be intent about showing how enlightened they are concerning these things. Privately, in my experience, I’ve heard so many students express discomfort with how “casual” everybody else is, but they don’t want to seem like a… prude. Unless you’re at Wesleyan or a place where they are pretty open about being very casual about sharing bathrooms, random nakedness, etc.

I’m pretty sure most people would understand a young woman not wanting a random guy seeing her in various states of undress… why is it different for a young man? Beyond the gender issue, maybe the GF is annoying. You have to put up with your roommate’s quirks… why do you need to deal with someone else’s?

Dinsdale, I’d suggest that your son look into other housing options for next year, or consider being an RA himself in the future. It is a job, but it also means you get a room to yourself at most places. And if he’s an engineer and he gets a floor full of engineers, they’ll be pretty easy to deal with. (Of all the assignments I had, working as the RA for the “intensive study” floor was the easiest one. Mostly engineers who kept to themselves.)

92

Unless his roommate is a complete and total ass, I don’t see why your son cannot just talk to him about this. I am glad that some progress is being made but I think it would be better for your son to approach this meeting tonight with the assumption that someone borrowed his batteries without asking and returned them.

Did your son and his roommate discuss rules for the room when they got to school? Most freshman want to look cool and not parent like in front of their peers so a lot of people tend to avoid the 5-10 minute conversation that solves most of these problems. If he is lucky enough to get a new roommate or even if he stays in his current situation, they need to sit down and discuss some ground rules.

The roommate needs to know what is off limits in the room and what is fair game. People who grew up with many siblings and others who grew up sharing a room might be used to being able to borrow things like school supplies without asking. Even living in a house I have had these issues come up repeatedly. People eat other peoples food and they use their batteries and printer paper. It happens and it will continue to happen unless you say something. The ground rules discussion should also cover their guest policies.

With regards to the prude thing, I think people on both sides are not really considering the other point of view on this. I highly doubt that your son is getting naked in the room with or without the girlfriend there. Boxers in front of a girl really is not that big of a deal. On the other hand, no one wants a girlfriend in the room at every waking minute. It is hard to relax with that extra person around and it does affect his ability to be comfortable in his own room. No one should be made to feel uncomfortable in their own room.

I am surprised that the RA mentioned available singles but I guess that is what happens when your school does not have a housing shortage. At my school, you would not get reassigned unless the situation was potentially harmful to your health.

93

I’m not even touching the rest of your post. I just can’t; it made my head hurt. But this?

I’m sorry…if you need (not want, but need) to “get your rocks off” and your roommate has a final exam the next day, then you are the one who should go elsewhere. A good roommate would pretend not to notice? When they have a final exam the next day? Really??

I’m glad I was never roommates with you, although I suspect I’m far too much of a “whiney [sic] little bitch” for your tastes.

94

They’re in college. They’re alowed to be immature.

Oh and it’s effective all right. We did that to my roommate sophomore year and she was all set to drive 2 hours back to Westchester. She was a bitch though. One thing I can’t abide by is the “extra roomate” girlfriend. You know, the one who walks around thinking she ownes the place and that her boyfriend is the king of the condo.

I had a roomate like that after I graduated. I was living with these two guys (friends of a friend) and the one guys girlfriend was a total pain in the ass. My first day moving in she’s like inviting god knows who to sleep over at our place. I straight up tell her “look, you need to ask before you start inviting your friends to stay over.” It’s not like I’d say no, but it’s basic common courtesy. So that pretty much made me a hero right off the bat with the other roomate and the landlord who hated her. Couple months later douchebag and his girl moved out and were replaced by this cool English dude who mostly drank and watched Red Dwarf.

Moral of the story is you gotta check your ho.

Yeah. It’s a tough situation dealing with the booty calls in a two bedroom dormroom situation. I’ve been on both sides of that and the flip side of that coin is the roommate who won’t get the fuck out of the room so you can get some.

Basically Dinsdale’s kid needs to work out with his roommate some kind of solution that meets both their needs. The biggest problem with college is that for the most part, everyone shares a room.
Quite frankly, I’m kind of surprised the roommate is comfortible with having another dude in the room with his half naked girlfriend.

95

The problem with most colleges is that you rarely have other places to go that are decent. That almost forces people that live in dorms to shack up in either his room our hers. It isn’t like college students can afford posh hotels and these aren’t (usually) prostitutes. That is actually a key point related to the OP. I understand perfectly why his son wouldn’t like the situation at hand and that is reasonable. However there are other forces at work that might compel a slightly less than considerate person to be overtaken by urges that tend to strike young males.

BTW, I met my wife when we accidentally left my dorm room door open and she decided to visit drunk as hell at 2 am and crawled into bed with me while I was asleep. She isn’t a slut by any stretch of the imagination but she slept in my bed 5 nights out of 7 starting immediately right after that. I slept in her room the rest of the time but her roommate was a real bitch even ignoring those circumstances. I do have some sympathy for the roommate and his girlfriend even though I can see the other side of it.

Would the son care if it occurred 3 times a week or once a month? Either position is fine but it helps refine the issue.

96

Then wait for another time and place.

It’s called self-control. You don’t get to impose on someone else – especially on the night before an exam – simply because you really, really want it. That’s not what responsible adults do.

97

Probably, but I don’t know. I think this summer before they met, the roomie proposed a series of “room rules.” I think one of them was “no sex in the room” - which doesn’t really cover sleeping over.

At the time his mom and I observed that it might be a little premature to think you could set out a comprehensive list of rules, and it kinda raised a bit of a red flag that the roomie was sort of “establishing dominance” by proposing rules.

I try to let my kids handle their own stuff, so I really don’t know much more than I wrote already. And I don’t know how long this has been going on. First I heard of it was (I believe) Sunday evening, and I got the impression it had been going on for maybe a week.

My son is a lot more private than I, but I feel that is his prerogative. And I’m not at all sure that he needs to lower his standards simply because his roommate is rude.

98

Not really true. My roommate once borrowed my tennis racquet for a game, which was okay–she asked and all. But she also “borrowed” the laces from my tennis shoes. (One of hers broke as she was tying her shoes, and she wanted them to match.) She “forgot” to mention this.

I had my PE class at 7 in the morning, and I was always late, and I always had some kind of excuse that I’d give and my PE teacher would make a face, roll her eyes or something, and make a note in the book, probably knocking down my grade. (I didn’t care. It was a requirement, but not enough hours to screw with the GPA.) When I told her my roommate stole my shoelaces she came right out and laughed.

99

Uhh…no. I don’t know if you’re a guy or not. I’m not, but depending on lots of things (body size/type, type of underwear you wear) your dick might be pokin’ out even when you’re not hard when you’re just in boxers. At least my boyfriend’s does and he’s averaged sized. So no, he should have the right to change his clothes in his own damn room without some chick around all the time. Not everyone feels comfortable showing themselves off in their underwear in front of the opposite sex and they shouldn’t have to be. I wouldn’t feel right getting down to my bra and panties in front of someone else’s boyfriend. And this girl should not “effectively be his roommate.” She should sleep in her own damn room. They shouldn’t be banging only in the boy’s room, and definitely not every night. And if they are just “hanging out” and not getting freaky, then maybe they should go to her room sometimes, or the multiple lounges that I am sure are on campus, the student center, outside, somewhere. Maybe if she and roommate were not in the room all the time, Dinsdale’s kid would be able to compromise and leave sometimes for when they want to have sex. So Dinsdale’s kid can have some quiet time without roommate and gf to study, masturbate, sleep, whatever he wants to do, and roommate and gf get some guaranteed time to have sex. Although making Dinsdale’s kid sleep somewhere else is not really fair unless there was some real special occasion like roommate and gf stay together and want one night alone for an anniversary or something. You learn to bang on the sly in college - when your roommate is in class, at work, or otherwise gone for awhile.

College doesn’t all of a sudden make anyone “free.” It makes them free of parental rules, but it doesn’t totally change their personality unless it’s just been inhibited forever. College just mainly, in my experience going away to college, made people drink beer more often. Just moving into a dorm and taking classes doesn’t automatically mean you’re now comfortable stripping in front of chicks you don’t like.

And guys do sleep in girls’ rooms sometimes. I lived in an all-girls dorm my freshman year. My roomie was older and AWOL usually, and my then long-distance bf came down a couple different weekends. I always asked roomie first if he could stay over though, because I’m not an asshole. Fire alarms in the middle of the night were not too uncommon, drunk people burning popcorn and stuff, and every time we had one, I’d see a guy or two in the crowd outside. Once one was there in the freezing cold weather not wearing much and yelling “does anyone have a cigarette?”

So basically, it’s not fair for roommate to always have girlfriend over. It’s not just his room. It’s a 50/50 split so both sides have to make a compromise. These kids don’t have to spend every night together. My boyfriend and I are older and live 2 hours apart and only sleep in the same bed like 4 or 5 nights a month. It sucks, but we survive. These kids are 18, they can survive too. Maybe girl sleeps over 2 nights a week and then he goes to sleep in her room 2 nights a week? Then maybe roommate should get a copy of Dinsdale’s kid’s class schedule, so maybe he can bang on the sly if he really needs to. Then both Dinsdale’s kid and roommate can leave the room to the other sometimes - go study in the library tonight, take girlfriend to the movies, etc. so they aren’t always on top of each other in the room. You can’t expect to always feel cool being in your dorm room (bc of what roommate is doing, even if it’s just them watching TV when you wanna study or sleep), but you should the majority of the time. I don’t know why roommate expected his gf to be able to sleep over all the time anyway?

100

This entire thread is why, after my first year, I always ALWAYS, even if I had to cheat or scam, had a roommate I was already good friends with.

I had this problem. My response was to make popcorn while they were having sex or just in bed together and watch intently after about the sixth night.

He retaliated by downloading horse porn onto my computer (he didn’t have one so up to that point I let him use mine).

I retaliated when I had my chance–he’d got into some kinda trouble with the fraternity that he was pledging, and retaliated by stealing some paddles. Then he stole their barstools and some photo albums. I got back from class and his side of the room looked like John Belushi’s rummage sale. Found out that he was only not in the room because he and his best friend were stealing some fraternity brother’s car.

When the guys from the frat came looking for him, he still wasn’t back. I let ‘em in, pointed to the masking-tape line on the floor, and excused myself to grab a shower (I’d been putting it off after fencing, surfing the net being WAY more important.) Besides, I knew one of the guys from engineering classes (he was a TA in somethin’). When I got back, not only was EVERYTHING on his side of the room except his bedframe (no mattress) and half his desk gone, but I had absolutely plausible deniability because no one ever locked doors to go to the shower–especially us, we were right across the hall from the bathroom.

In closing, I guess I suggest Dinsdale’s kid get some random third party to temporarily destroy the roommate’s life for unclear reasons. :cool:

After that I only had one trouble with him. He came home around 3AM stoned off his ass and started blasting either the Dead or Phish, which is fine but not at 90dB at 3AM. So I beat him into incoherency (in fairness this amounted to two gut punches and shoving him onto his bed) stole the power cord from his stereo and locked it in my desk, and gave it back in the morning. I don’t even think he remembered me forcibly putting his ass to bed.

Shit, when I had to get laid, I ASKED my roommate. We had a SYSTEM. Well, that and we all had at least one night class on a night our roommate was home, so that and lunch break quickies were designated gettin’-laid time. Hell, at one point 6’1" 230lb me and my pleasantly curvy and 6’4" girlfriend had sex in the back of her Focus hatchback barely pulled off a only somewhat busy highway, because I “needed to get laid” (it seems that way at 19) but my roommate had to study. I should get a medal for that.