off-campus finances among roommate -- suggestions?

somemom
Fri, 15 May 2009 01:49:57 +0000

My DD roomed with a girl who appeared very nice from her first year dorm and DD moved out mid year- the nice girl had an amazing array of drugs and such and it became very ugly very fast.

She thought she knew her, but she didn’t, nor did she want to be like her, which caused further conflict (aside from the logical, don’t be in a place where illegal stuff is going) This was some one from her freshman dorm floor, so you would think they would have known more about each other.

The question is not do you do drugs or do you wash dishes (rather both ends of the spectrum there!) but how will we handle it if something like this becomes an issue. I would not actually expect the drug thing to become an issue in most cases, but if they have addressed hoe they would expect each other to deal with something that outrageous, then the smaller issues will be easy when they develop.

If they can talk about the crazy stuff as a hypothetical, then they will deal more easily with whatever arises.

On the cleaning thing, I have one slob DD and one neatnik- if your kid is into being neat, they will have to simply realise they will be shouldering the largest part of that burden themselves, in general.

A Dd who had great luck in off campus roommates always roomed with fellow sorority sisters so there was a larger outside peer pressure for every one to live up to a certain standard. 19 of them rented a house in the fall after pledging in the spring, so they did not really and truly know each other and it worked well.