Wow. Some of these comments are so judgy. My daughter is a double engineering major but she spent lots of time picking stuff for her dorm room. Her taste is very feminine/ Flowery. She also spends a lot of time on her clothing/ hair and nails. She happy to talk about electrical circuitry AND Balayage ( the latest in hair highlighting trends). Liking Pretty girly things doesn’t preclude an intellectually challenging course load or career.
Of course it doesn’t @maya54. I just can’t understand people trying to make a virtue out of slovenly ugliness.
You would think that people would actually want their daughters to have high standards in terms of personal presentation as well as academic endeavors. It’s not as if they are mutually exclusive (except maybe in New England?). You should be very proud of your daughter; she’ll go far.
First off, as a decorator, I find take a slight offense to the accusation that there is something “shallow” about these young women just because they want to decorate their rooms a certain way. I don’t see anything wrong with these students creating living environments that make them feel comfortable and at home. Most likely, those young women are away from their families for the first time in their lives, and perhaps just enjoying their rooms would make the transition to college easier. If my daughter wanted to decorate her dorm room that way, I wouldn’t mind a bit. Lots of the stuff that I’ve seen on Pinterest for the Ole Miss rooms has stuff you can find at Target, WalMart, Michaels, or even the dollar store. I’ve even seen an Ole Miss tutorial for a DIY fabric headboard and a DIY fridge/microwave cabinet. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. But even if it did cost a fortune, who am I to judge?
Some girls do spend a good bit of money on their rooms, but others make a crafts project out of it. The girls do treat it as a kind of contest; I can think of worse things. Some people hear or read “Ole Miss” and see a photo of two attractive girls in an over-the-top dorm room and just go nuts. It just pushes all of their buttons at once.
I pretty much decorated my house using the same stores those girls used. It is not expensive to decorate a room like that. Finding a roommate who will keep it neat and tidy like this is more difficult than decorating the room. This is much to do about nothing.
My budget thanks my kids’ college for not assigning roommates until August, long after the window for this kind of decorating would be closed (the UM girls started planning close to a year in advance). It’s nice that these students shopped at places like HomeGoods and TJ Maxx, but anyone who has ever had a custom pillow made, to say nothing of custom quilted headboards, curtains, bedskirts, and professional furniture refinishing, knows that these girls are not working within a standard student budget.
The fact that it all seems over the top and a little too “twinsie” to me isn’t really relevant; these girls have the right to decorate in a style that makes them happy, but like MaterS I would worry about the message this sends to kids who don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on coordinated decor.
The only message it’s sending to other kids are good life lessons: don’t worry about how much money others have or how others choose to spend their money; learn to make financial decisions based on your own circumstances.
^ I don’t know…26 dorm rooms and not a person of color in sight.
Your point? Don’t make something so trivial be about race. It’s not. Any student of any race with the means and desire to do so can decorate their rooms like this.
“but like MaterS I would worry about the message this sends to kids who don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on coordinated decor.”
What “message does it send” other than that’s how they want to keep their rooms?
It’s pure and utter projection that therefore they would look down upon or act all snotty towards girls who didn’t do the same. PURE projection.
So just because not all could afford to decorate their rooms then no one should? This is not grade school any more that everyone should be invited to a party. It is ok for our kids to know there are people who are different than us (richer or poorer) and they need to deal with it. It was an eye open for my kids when they went to college.
It is cute. Agree that roommates can do whatever they want. I don’t think it sends any particular message other than these two obviously worked very hard together to create their own environment.
I agree that roommates can do what they want. My concern was more that according to the girls it’s a competitive thing in their dorm. It seems it’s expected that women will do this kind of decorating-decorating that seems unaffordable on a FA budget.
I would feel the same if I arrived on my kid’s campus to find that everyone but she had a BMW parked in the student parking lot. There’s no law against BMW’s but it would tell me it wasn’t the school for my [full pay] kid.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the symmetry. In my day, the dorm room looked like the Brady Bunch bedroom with the piece of tape running down the middle - each roomie had exactly half the space of the room to express herself however she wished. Anyone who walked in and knew both girls would know exactly whose side was whose.
I assumed the same would be true for my D. She is both individualistic and tolerant. I never had any concern about her coexisting peacefully with whichever random roommate she is assigned. But if she is expected to conform to some girl’s mother’s interior design fantasy? That won’t fly.
Who said that anyone is expected to conform to anyone else’s fantasy? There’s nothing to suggest that these girls didn’t mutually decide to do this.
“I would feel the same if I arrived on my kid’s campus to find that everyone but she had a BMW parked in the student parking lot. There’s no law against BMW’s but it would tell me it wasn’t the school for my [full pay] kid.”
Sometimes it just isn’t about you. No one else’s BMW is about you and what’s “expected” of you, at all.
I don’t understand why this is controversial. Don’t people always decorate their personal space to make it feel like their home? It’s human nature to build a “nest.”
Are these girls picking their roommates or are they randomly assigned? What happens if a girl who wants to have matching decor is assigned to room with a girl who can’t afford it? Does the college allow them to keep switching until they find one who can? Or is that something they list on their roommate preference question so those who are interested are matched from the beginning? Maybe most students there can afford to decorate like that. I’d be hesitant to let my daughter apply there because it’s the sort of thing she’d love to do, but it’s just not in our budget.
I suspect in a lot of cases, they’re picking each other from Facebook groups the school year before, although some might go random, and another large portion are rooming with friends from high school, from what I see at my similar Southern school.
As long as no one is being roped into something they can’t afford or have no interest in doing, I don’t see the controversy at all.
“I don’t know…26 dorm rooms and not a person of color in sight.”
It’s possible that the women of color are not as interested in doing this, which is their perfect right, of course. It’s not required that there be an even distribution of hobbies / tastes across the races. If this were an article about hair-braiding, it’s possible there would be only black girls and not a white girl. That’s how it goes!
If this were an article about really being into country music, it’s possible that white girls would skew more to that than black girls. Oh well! Such is life. There’s no greater meaning behind it other than people have their tastes.
“anyone who has ever had a custom pillow made, to say nothing of custom quilted headboards, curtains, bedskirts, and professional furniture refinishing, knows that these girls are not working within a standard student budget.”
So? This is a big fat so-what as far as I’m concerned.
I love how there are apparently parameters that everyone has to conform to. What is the “approved” amount that a new college freshman should be “allowed” to spend on clothing, shoes / accessories, jewelry, a car (if relevant), going to restaurants, her spring break, etc.? Of course, a penny less than what I can afford to spend is “too bad, so sad, the poor dear” and a penny more than what I can spend is “showy, tacky, superficial.”