Michigan's Overnight Guest Policy

bclintonk
Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:30:02 +0000

DesiGirl123:

If my roommate wants to have overnight guests, does she have to ask me?



The university doesn’t want to get into the business of policing roommate relationships, so there are no rules per se. The assumption is that you and your roommate are co-tenants with equal rights to use the room, and there is no explicit prohibition on short-term overnight guests, so as with any question as to how the room is used, you pretty much just need to act reasonably and work it out. Most people would assume this means checking in with your roommate and getting her OK before having any overnight guest, and all the more so if the overnight guest is a member of the opposite sex. There can be frictions if one roommate is unusually uptight about such things or if one roommate is unusually demanding about having overnight guests. Most people work it out, but if they can’t, there may be limited opportunities to swap rooms/roommates or to transfer to housing vacancies that open up over the course of the year.

If you (or your family) are particularly uncomfortable with the idea of your roommate having overnight guests of the opposite sex, my guess is it happens somewhat less frequently in all-women’s buildings like Betsy Barbour or Helen Newberry (or Martha Cook, which is the one residence hall that does have rules prohibiting opposite-sex overnight guests). You should also be aware, however, that the host roommate could also have a sexual relationship with an overnight guest of the same sex.

Hey, that’s modern life.