idic5

Curious about whether anyone had any problems with roommates and what were the solutions? How easy was it working with the admin to get the problem resolved?

D is at the dorm selection time and I was wondering about this subject *just in case* something went south.

There is a big thread goin' on in another part of CC on this subject. I thought I'd scope it to LU and see any experiences.

"Don't room with people you already know." do you agree?

dyserenity

I'm probably the worst example with roommate luck. My first roommate was basically OCD with a completely opposite sleep schedule to mine. My second roommate started stalking me. For a while, probably about a whole term, I was sleeping in lounges and on friend's floors because I was so uncomfortable in my own room. I lived out of my backpack and only went back about every other day to grab clean clothes. I ended up with a single.

It's pretty easy, depending on your RHD, to switch roommates. Usually you just need to go talk to the RHD of your dorm.

I had to go talk to the Dean of Residential Life about the single. I had a note from my doctor saying I wasn't sleeping and that it was making me sick (The amount of ER trips I've had to take this year turns my stomach). I was switched that day. (I didn't bring up the stalking. I was afraid of retaliation by my second roommate. When I told her I was moving out, she kept dropping stuff on me and even hit me in the head with the trunk of a friend's car when I was loading stuff into it. That was another ER trip. I had a small concussion. All of security knows me by sight now.)

ResLife tries very hard to keep everyone happy.

EDIT: (I should have gone to ResLife earlier, but I was trying to stick it out and not make a big deal out of it each time. I probably should have gone to the police about second roomie there. ResLife is usually very helpful.)

van_do

Thank god you have a single now.

dyserenity

I agree. I slept so much during third term while away from all the craziness. Haha.

idic5

dys-that sounds like a pretty bad 1st yr res experience. I hope things are going smoother for you now. It looks like you tried to stick it out to see if the situation would get better. So you are saying that reslife wd have attempted to correct this sooner if that org were notified sooner?

Here is another naive question from a naive parent who never went to college: is it not cool, or in other ways just not done, to complain to the reslife (college admin) or even to a student's parents about roomie problems? Is that considered bad form to do so?

At a cost of over $40k a year, or even at cost of nothing, the only ER visit EVER should be for a true accident and not something due to a problem already known by the admin. One would think that colleges wd be extra sensitive to stalker/mentally ill students since there have been so many problems in the news in recent yrs (VA tech, NIU etc etc). I'm sure the reslife people wd just LOVE to chat with idic5 about matters such as this.

jimjohnjoe

It is not 'cool' for a parent to contact ResLife and certainly parents should NOT contact the other parents.

It is the student who is attending the college not the parent.

It is the student that must learn to deal with life's little and big problems.

Parents who fret and worry over weird possibiliities that make IMO students stressed about college life unnecessarily.

So Idic5 who has never attended college and who is not going to college this fall, my advise is to take a rest and ceases considering every possible negative - think positive thoughts (for a change)- allow the student to have an experience directly rather than having so many negative possibilities chewed over like an old bone.

I truly hope your student has a happy experience at Lawrence and that you recognized that in the years to come, parent weekend happens each fall, the rest of the time is for the students.

idic5

quote/ It is not 'cool' for a parent to contact ResLife and certainly parents should NOT contact the other parents./quote

I actually meant -- is it cool for a *student* to contact reslife and/or parents re res problems?

and Yes, I am probably guilty as charged of thinking about some negative things. Hey, but not always - I informed CC about the great LU video on this site. My profession, and my personality, is to ask questions. The question ARE honest, and mostly out of curiousity of someone blind who wants to know. Sort of 'the only dumb question is the one not asked'. So I ask. There is also the gaudy money cost going on here, too. You should see the questions I asked the roofers who just did my house for $16,000. College wd be something like several roofs.

But I understand the point made by jimjohnjoe, and college is not exactly like a roof and part of the 'product' that we are buying is independence, or 'leading out' (from the latin, educare).

We'll think "open", send positive thoughts, and give LU the benefit of the doubt - after all, they have been doing this for 160 some yrs. But I might still ask a question - whether 'negative' or whatever in this forum which seems amenable to open ended whatever questions. Yes, I can tell the LU admin is tired of my questions which are 100 times less numerous and certainlly less 'negative' than anything I dare pose here. This is another reason I pose some questions in this forum - LU admin is terse in their responses.