Disaster Roommate

When coming to college, students are forced to deal with all sorts of challenges and adapt to different situations. And one of those challenges can be dealing with their roommate.

Whether it be from random selection or hand-picked that person the living situation can sometimes prove to be difficult.

Sophomore Shelby Carlson was forced to put up with a difficult roommate during her first year of college. After choosing random selection, Carlson soon found herself in weird situations with her roommate that included awkward sexual encounters and odd behavior.

“We never really had any disagreements, she was just kind of weird in general,” Carlson said.

Phil Covington, associate dean of student life, said when it comes to difficult roommate situations, the housing department attempts to solve them at the lowest level of resolution possible.

Covington said there is a process that is followed when a student has a roommate problem. The first step is to sit down and have a conversation about the issue.             “It may be something silly like dirty socks and sometimes having a conversation is all it takes,” Covington said.

If a conversation does not solve the issue, Covington said the next step is to have a community advisor sit down and mediate the issue. He said coming up with a roommate contract and establishing ground rules can solve the problem a lot of the time.

“The beauty of this is that we’re being proactive and establishing rules in advance,” he said. “Hopefully the community advisor can mediate some of the conflict because a mutual third party helps to diffuse the situation.”

If a sit down with a community director doesn’t bring about a resolution, Covington said students have the option to turn to their residence hall director to help work through the issue.

Covington said the ability to bring about a resolution depends on the willingness of both parties.

“Conversation usually works, but then there’s other times when it doesn’t,” he said. “At that point a student is able to file a roommate change request with the housing department.”

The next steps in the changing of roommates depends entirely on the situation, Covington said. If a person agrees to move out of the living space, the central office helps them look at where they want to live and what is open.

“The time frame depends on the time of the week and what’s going on,” he said. “Some people can be moved right away while for others it might take a few days.”

Typically the time frame is no more than four days, Covington said.

“It all depends on openings,” he said. “Three years ago it was really easy but there’s so few empty spaces left and it’s more difficult to find empty space to make a move.”

The question of which roommate has to move comes up in every situation. Covington said, most of the time, one of them volunteers.

“Most times someone volunteers, but sometimes it’s a stalemate and we may just have to move both people,” he said.

Carlson applied for a roommate change, which she said took a couple of months to go through.

“I had to file for a new one and that took a while to process and they had to approve me,” she said. “Then I had to do paperwork, a room key switch and I even had to take down my own loft.”

Carlson was eventually able to switch rooms at semester time.

Different situations call for different ways of handling them, Covington said.

“If what the other person is doing is a violation of policy or law we ask them to share that information because those people need to be held accountable,” he said.

Depending on the illegal activity and whether it violates the law or university policy, Covington said it is dealt with by Student Rights and Responsibilities or in some cases, a judge.

He also said if someone’s safety or security is compromised, they can be moved to a temporary space until their permanent location is available.

“That is their home, and if they can’t be safe and secure nothing else matters,” he said.

Roommate change requests opened up Sept. 3 and Covington said the housing department usually receives several hundred requests over the course of an academic year.

“What they ended up with when they moved in, was not that what they wanted,” he said. “The most common reason we here is simply ‘I want to live in a different area so I can live closer to my friends.’”

He said people being really unhappy with their current roommate are one of the less common reasons.

“It’s all conflict resolution,” Covington said. “It’s one of the beauties about living in a community environment.”