Welcome Freshmen! Let's Rumble!

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, my daughter is in her Freshman year at a major university (I won’t say which one, however, I’ve probably mentioned it in other threads). She’s a fairly flexible person–she spent her junior high school year in Istanbul as an exchange student, and when she was twelve we moved from middle class white American in the Bible Belt to inner city, poverty bound multi-ethnic America. She’s used to adapting to her surroundings and meeting new people, and in fact, her very first day in her new dorm, she made bestest buds with a girl down the hall from Puerto Rica.

Her room mate, however, is a different story. Her room mate dates a drug dealer (who is not a student at the college), has screaming fits over the phone with the drug dealer boyfriend at all hours of the night, will let her room phone ring 20-30 times and not answer it (no answering machine, no volume/mute button on phone, and my daughter has counted the rings), used my daughter’s stuff, spreads baby powder all over the room (daughter slipped and fell in it last week) and when my daughter left this weekend to come home, ate Daughter’s food in Daughter’s frig (even though room mate has her own), and used her personal hygiene items (Daughter had them placed so she could tell if anyone used them–like the hair left in the door–if you place a hair in the door, then come back and the hair is gone, you know someone has opened the door). Daughter has attempted to talk to the room mate, who just goes off (verbally) on Daughter. Daughter went to the RA, who said Daughter could file a complaint, which Daughter did.

Only now, Room mate has physically threatened to beat up Daughter, who has now gone to housing to complain. (When Daughter called Security, Security told her to contact Housing–they couldn’t do anything about it.)

I was a nontraditional college student, and never lived in dorms. My older daughter never had a problem such as this…but is this normal? Anyone else ever been threatened by his or her college roommate? How was it handled? Any advice or suggestions?

2

Ah Yes…We have this problem several times, and it always happens in the lower-classmen dorms. As a college prof. and academic advisor, I get students calling me on this every year. Yes, it is true that housing has to deal with it. But a phone call is not what is needed. She must physically go to housing, tell them the situation, and not leave until she is reassigned a room. If the place is to capacity, then she needs to ask to be re-placed to another room, with someone else who has filed a complaint. If no one else has filed a complaint, meaning that every person is absolutely fine with their room assignments (which would be a first for me) then she needs to go see the dean or her academic advisor. Either should be abel to get the reassignment done with-in one day, meaning she need not sleep there again tonight. But she needs to be persistent at housing, and or with the deans office. If you need more info let me know, my email is posted.

3

Housing pushed her off on her RD…Daughter has now posted herself at the door of the RD…

4

Seeing the RD is a good idea, as long as she is consistent, she should have no problem changing her situation. Dorm life has a huge psychological effect on these kids, most RD’s understand this, especially those dealing with incoming students.

5

Damn, that sucks. My ex-girlfriend had a similar problem, wherein her roommate’s boyfriend not only stayed over for weeks at a time, but also beat on the roommate. For some reason, neither of them wanted to do anything despite being told to by friends and family and finally she got around to filing a complaint and things got worked out.

I’m surprised that your campus would allow assault to occur, especially if it appears that it will lead to physical violence in the immediate future.

The trick that worked for the gf and my own housing dilemma was to make as much of a polite pest as possible (they never help jerks), and keep tossing around “concerned for my safety.” That was what did it in both cases.

6

Yep, been there, done that, or had all that done to me.

Freshman year was nice, no probs in the dorms, but during the intervening summer before soph year started the college decided to devote my building to freshmen-only, and I was arbitrarily assigned to a new dorm. Dorms on that campus were arranged in suites within each building (you needed one key to get into the suite, another to get into your indiv room, there was a common space, etc). My suitemates were close friends of a successful rapper fellow named LL Cool J, and aspired to repeat his success themselves, so they’d start in practicing live rap around 10:30 PM. I was signed up for 23 credits and felt like after midnight I should not be hearing stuff that kept me from sleeping, and told them so. And again. And again. Told my RA. Nothing was done. Then went to Housing, filed a complaint. Nothing was done. Then to Public Safety, filed a complaint. Nothing was done. Wrote letters that were published in the school newspaper. Returned to Housing & Pub Safety. Nothing was done.

So I put on my heavy hiking boots next time they were blasting it past midnight and kicked holy hell out of the door until they opened it (sounded like I was slamming the door with a baseball bat, those boots are heavy and hard-soled), stormed in, yelled at them, got my life threatened, yelled some more, stormed out. Ten minutes later they started up again and I called Public Safety and reported a knife fight down the hall, then hung up and walked down the hall and kicked holy hell out of the door again. Public safety arrived when we were screaming at each other out in the hall and they finally wrote something down about it.

I explained to Public Safety and Housing that I thought it would be a good thing if some of the dorm space were given over to people who wanted to be able to be loud after midnight, because we don’t all have the same habits, and I myself would not want to be in one where the rule was no lights and no sound after 10 PM or anything, but that I needed to be able to relax and sleep and therefore they needed to move me or get this late-hour noise stopped or I’d have to stop it myself. “Well, I’d be careful with these guys, they fancy themselves ‘gangstas’ and they may get violent”, I was warned.

“Well, I’m sorry, but if they’re making noise after midnight again, I’m going to have to bust in on them again and this time I’m going to smash up their stereo equipment. I hope they don’t kill me or anything, and I wouldn’t want to kill them either, but hey, I’ve got to get some peace and quiet”.

They moved me. In fact, they had no other single available on the whole campus so they gave me an unoccupied double AS a single at the same price just to resolve the issue.

I don’t think they would have done anything if I hadn’t made it as vividly apparent as possible that this was going to be a loud ugly fight if they didn’t intervene, though.

(Old Westbury State, NY Class of '88)

7

Hmm, I liked my roommates. Most of the guys on my floor were ok with their roommates, in fact. I only remember one person asking to be reassigned (his ex-roommate then got the room to himself).

Luck o’ the draw, I guess. Or else my university’s pre-assignment questionnaire (how late do you like to stay up, what kind of music do you listen to, etc.) was actually effective.

8

Daughter is now moving into her own dorm room. Same floor, but on a different end of the building.