Roommate may be from a different background from your child - great! It will be a learning experience for both of them
Roommate may be more into “partying” than your child - something your child (not you) needs to address with roommate. A roommate agreement should deal with use of drugs and alcohol in the room. But, remember, your child has NO authority over what roommate does outside of room.</p>
<p>Just consider freshman year to be a great learning experience - lots of new people, lots of new opportunities - and trust your child to make good decisions and call home once a week. Done!</p>
<p>I didn’t see “white” in the OP, I said it sounded like that from all indications. Many, many assumptions were made in the OP.</p>
<p>And roman-my ex went hunting on his own through D’s FB friends’ pages and made all kinds of assumptions. Not saying OP did, but he too came to many of OP’s conclusions.</p>
<p>Remember that a lot of college students grew up and went to K-12 school in areas which are mainly one racial or ethnic group. For example, places like Placerville, Redding, and Humboldt (all in California, where the most probable colleges in question are) are over 75% white (non-Hispanic), and the Los Angeles Unified School District is about 73% Latino. So it should not be considered that unusual if a recent high school graduate’s Facebook friends are mostly of the same racial or ethnic group.</p>
<p>Ummm, but if you consider diversity a good thing (post #11), then why worry about any of these kinds of differences? The only real concern is if the roommate stores illegal substances in the dorm room, or other “typical roommate problems” (level of partying and the like).</p>
<p>Yup, ethnicity was noted to give a total picture, but in hindsight really wasn’t relevant. Oops. This was super emotionally charged but not intended… Yup, kid is very comfortable with friends across racial lines… I think the core issue that’s on his mind is that my sense is that he won’t be comfortable living with a person who so openly publicly smokes pot (or at least seems to present that) and how that would affect his experience …</p>
<p>Parent, I’ll ask my question again. Who found the fb page? Did he and have issues? Or did you and you have issues? It really makes a difference. Has he brought up his discomfort or are you just guessing?</p>
<p>I saw nothing wrong with the OP. I would be concerned about a potential roommate’s drug and alcohol use as well. His ethnicity in and of itself is not an issue, but getting into a school through a slightly different process might concern me, particularly in conjunction with drug use.</p>
<p>It’s “walk a mile in his moccasins” time. If the future roommate has grown up in an ethnic enclave, he may be anxious about living with some white guy who probably has a lot more money than he does. </p>
<p>He may just be facebook bragging about the pot. Even if he isn’t, he may be wary about getting into trouble for using it in college and plan to limit his use to vacation time.</p>
<p>I subscribe to a medical website intended for med students, as well as others interested in medicine. In a comment this morning about an article talking about doping in med school, one student reported that in his estimation, 50% of the students at his med school used stimulant drugs. These are our best and brightest.</p>
<p>Drug use is rampant in colleges, and the OPs son will encounter it. An honest talk once he meets his room mate and establishes some rapport, establishing a few guidelines to help each of them become considerate of one another in general would be a good idea. This would be an opportunity for OPs son to request that no illegal stuff be smoked in the room. It’s very likely that the new room mate feels the same way.</p>
<p>I think the focus was meant to be the drugs, drinking, tattoos and etc. I think the rest was just OP’s attempt at context- newish poster, not aware of what strikes our sensitivities. I also just assumed the first gen and program comments were based on someting from FB.</p>
<p>In that respect, let’s admit many kids and parents post their concerns that a roomie may pose problems- it’s not always about backgrounds, more often about interests and whether or not the roomie will not share the same sense of limits and mutual respect.</p>
<p>I’d pretty much wait-and-see. In my kids’ hs, it wasn’t always possible to distinguish on FB between which friends were bluffing and which really did have substance issues. Kiddo moves in and assesses the situation. Maybe he says, at some point, early on: look, you’ve got all that stuff on FB and I’m not into it, let’s make this work for both of us.</p>
<p>Most colleges have the roommates do a roommate agreement when they get there. Just make sure your student makes sure that the contract has on it the understanding that there will be no illegal substances in the room. Write it down on the contract. </p>
<p>That will get the point across loud and clear. </p>
<p>Otherwise, your student does not have to like the romommate, just learn to co-habitate with them this year.</p>
<p>The housing director told me that students would see their roommate with nose ring, tattoo, or something they wouldn’t normal do and assume their roommate is a particular type of person. She said before FB no one knew what their roommate looked like until the first day of, and everyone got along fine. She said sometimes it is just too much information.</p>
<p>D1 had a roommate at a summer program who was completely opposite of her. If she had seen her FB picture, I think D1 would have been scared to room to with her. The girl wore all black combat outfits. She told D1 that she didn’t like light, so the room had to be black most of the time. She told D1 that her father had passed away (5 years ago) and she was trying to get over it. Long story short, they didn’t become best friends, but they were good roommates. D1 said the RM would talk to her before they went to bed about her work (graphic design) and crushes she had. Both girls learned a lot from each other.</p>
<p>No idea, but it does narrow the list of colleges down considerably (combined with other stated and implied characteristics of the college from the first post). The likeliest colleges are public universities in California, so some of the other posters’ assumptions about the racial and ethnic background of the OP and the student’s roommate are less likely to be true than they would be in some other places.</p>
<p>I accept what you say - that it was not your intention to present the way it appears you might have, and that the pot smoking, etc. is of concern even to your son, and he is the one who brought it up.</p>
<p>That being the case, I would ask my son if he’d like some support in changing rooms. I would not knowingly have my kid forced into a room-mate situation with someone who boldly smokes pot and drinks underage - to the point that those activities are a focus on their facebook page. If that’s not your kid’s scene, and really, even if it is, could be a recipe for disaster. I’d help him make other arrangements if that’s what he wants.</p>
<p>If he doesn’t want to move, I like some of the other posters suggestions about him just making a room-mate agreement and making sure it’s known that he doesn’t want any illegal substances in the room - so as not to jeapordize his housing or his own legal standing, etc.</p>
<p>I will say that at my university, you cannot request a room change until a week or so after classes start and it explicitly says that Facebook is not a valid reason. Just something to keep in mind if he does decide to try to switch rooms.</p>