From Inside Higher Ed:
I thought the rooms looked nice. My kids had singles freshman year, so they didn’t have to color coordinate, but their rooms were very much decorated. D1’s room at her sorority was a showcase room during the rush.
This is such a non-story. I think they look nice. How a student decorates their room is nobody else’s business.
I’m always puzzled by all the people who seem to think that being a total slob is some sort of virtue. These girls didn’t even paint the room, they just worked with the color it already was.
For the record, my college roommate and I coordinated our freshman bedspreads and purchased a coordinating rug together for our room back in the 1970s and made an effort to hang attractive framed posters as well as we could on our cinderblock walls (just like the cinderblock walls in the Ole Miss dorm). Big deal. Some people prefer nice surroundings instead of squalor.
Personally, I think there’s something wrong with people like the woman quoted in the Slate article (who got her facts wrong anyway).
Many schools have kids designing their dream rooms.
I coordinated bedspread/room color with my freshman roommate in the late 70’s. My D coordinated bedspread/room color with her roommate just a few years ago (granted in a more high tech fashion as they texted pictures back and forth). IMO it is harmless fun and good pre-college bonding. In our case, everything we bought we would have to get anyway. And FWIW neither one of us lived with our freshman roommate for the other three years of college and had mismatched rooms from sophomore year on… Oh well…
Maybe that is why she is working for Slate.
This is not a “controversy,” This is some nothing-to-do and I-hate-everything people complaining that these young adults keep their room too clean and neat. Their babbling is unworthy of discussion and attention. Let them mind their and their kids rooms.
P.S. I love the rooms.
“One of the best parts of a college dorm is knowing you can totally trash it and no one will ever notice because it’s already a pit of cracking, peeling, leaking, flaking, creaking, festering slime,” she wrote. “My college dishwashing strategy went like this: eat Easy Mac from bowl; place dirty bowl on windowsill; let Easy Mac remnants dry to crust over period of weeks; wash bowl whenever it’s Easy Mac time again”
What a pig. She must be delightful in how she keeps a cubicle or break room at work.
My kids didn’t really decorate their rooms beyond the basics, but I don’t see a thing wrong with it. Are they using your money? No? Then shut your mouth up.
I think these people are ridiculous, but there should be no controversy. If they want to live this way, let 'em.
The author of the article quoted above went to Georgetown. Glad my kids’ roommates all had reasonably normal hygiene habits, not bowls of crusty macaroni and cheese left out for weeks, or as she also mentions, vomit on the floor that no one really worried too much about.
This is the non-student version of the General Tso’s Chicken revolt.
These students have very little space to call their own. Cut 'em a little slack for wanting to personalize it and make it nice.
I just don’t see how it’s “offensive.” Is rather walk down a hall like that than a hall populated by people with crusty bowls and crud strewn all over the place. There’s nothing “authentic” or “real” in being a total slob.
Initially I though it looked cute and thought, “So what?” Then I did a Google image search for “dorm room ideas for Ole Miss.” What I thought was a cute idea for roommates to bond turned into a ****ing contest.
Can you imagine being the first in your family to attend college or attending with significant FA and walking down the dorm hallways the first few days?
And they aren’t that original. Here’s the first hit I got on google. Very similar to the girls’ room mentioned above - just different color scheme. And this one is decorated by an interior design mom.
http://www.sunherald.com/living/home-garden/article96682142.html
Here, taken verbatim from the article, is the opposite extreme:
(emphasis mine)
The best path, as usual, is somewhere between two extremes, but if I had to choose one or the other there’d be no contest.
Critics of these roommates were totally tone deaf. Who can dismiss hygiene and orderliness? Even if you find the monograms too precious, what is the alternative? Psychedelic Bob Marley posters? Marijuana leaf tapestries? Lava lamps ordered from Amazon? Pictures of Adele ripped from magazines? Milk crate nightstands? Filthy curtains donated by ex-boyfriend’s mother’s ex-boyfriend?
The article’s advice to hire an interior decorator comes from…an interior decorator. Color me surprised.
Everyone’s free to do as they wish, but IMO those beds are more trouble than they’re worth. I’ve stayed at one house like this, and tidying 4 layers of sheets/blankets and half a dozen pillows quickly gets old.