<p>I’d tell your Dad that you are going to an American college and that you don’t know of ANY American college (other than maybe Bob Jones University) that would tollerate his racism. </p>
<p>If your Dad can’t handle the randomness of a dorm assignment, tell him to foot the bill for you to rent an apartment off campus. The solution is NOT for your Dad to make a fool of himself with the housing authority at the college. </p>
<p>Your other choice is to empancipate yourself from your Dad’s financial help. It is a big sacrifice, but it has a lot of other potential. I think I would rather work fulltime for a year, put aside some money, attend a Community College, go to a less prestigious college, etc - rather than live under a racist father’s thumb. His only real control over you is money - if you break from that, you will have a whole host of different options available. This choice shouldn’t be made lightly, but you wouldn’t be the first adult child to make that kind of decision.</p>
<p>Erm, don’t those floors accept people of all colors? </p>
<p>Chicano floor doesn’t reinforce racism, because Chicano isn’t a race. Chicano is Mexican American, and Mexican Americans are people of all different colors and races. </p>
<p>Asian doesn’t even have to be a race either; it could just be someone from Asia! Several of my friends, white as can be, are Korean.</p>
<p>Having been raised by European parents who were a generation removed from my friends’ parents, I understand your plight. Changing a cultural and lifelong prejudice is near to impossible, especially when that parent is supported by his peers, as was the case with mine. He doesn’t and can’t understand this open-mindeness. And especially coming from his own child who he still considers a kid! My original advice still stands.</p>
<p>*Erm, don’t those floors accept people of all colors? *</p>
<p>They do, but from my experience going to through those floors, it’s mostly a tool to self-segregate, perhaps not on racial lines but at least on cultural lines.</p>
<p>OP… sigh… my sympathies if your father really does get involved in this and creates some issues for you. I doubt the housing office will accommodate his request for change, certainly not before the session starts. </p>
<p>By the way, maybe this anecdote will strike a note: a woman recalled that when she began her freshman year at Princeton many years ago, her mother was appalled to discover that the girl’s Princeton roommate was black and from south side of Chicago. Despite the fact that the two roommates got along well, the mother kept calling Princeton’s housing office insisting her daughter get moved into another room (with another roommate of course.) To its credit Princeton never acted on these requests. </p>
<p>The black woman from the south side of Chicago ended up doing quite well in life. She went onto Harvard Law school, married a skinny fellow law student named Obama, and soon may be moving to Washington as First Lady.</p>
<p>newhope33: there was a spot for the Omar’s home phone but it was blank so the only info i have on my roommate is that his name is Omar. =T</p>
<p>mom60: most likely it would be only for the summer. they put us together based on our housing questionaire, but they didnt pay attention to our choice of housing given that we are all put into one dorm. there are 6 dorms in the school so it is a possibility that i would have him as a roommate for the year but i believe that is quite slim.</p>
<p>so my dad made good on his word: he called. but nobody answered LOL. now he’s saying i’m not going to go to school anymore; stay at home. when you were a little kid, you had to go to school otherwise they’d arrest me. now you’re 18, you don’t have to. go call the police on me now (challenging me).</p>
<p>and i did email the program director telling him beforehand that this was going to happen and my stance on it: that i really didnt care who i’d room with. and i explained the situation and asked for advice and if he couldn’t provide advice then to forward the email to someone who could. but i have yet to receive a response.</p>
<p>he (my dad) claims that other students doing FSSP got note of this Omar and requested that he not be their roommate over and over until i got him and i am stupid to be okay with it. he’s really being a racist about this. saying if i apply for a federal position, then i would have to inform my employer that i had roomed with a muslim and they would not hire me etc etc. </p>
<p>i just want to reiterate that i do not share in his beliefs; i could care less if i got a gay (insert race here). i just don’t want them to invade my personal space, play games till 4 in the morning when i have class at 8, rummage through my belongings when i’m not present, and so on.</p>
<p>Sorry, but your dad is ridiculous. Tell him that you emailed the program director for him, and they’re “handling it”-- even if they do nothing but tell you there’s nothing that can be done, you’re dad will be under the impression that they have done something. If he happens to meet your roommate when you move-in, he won’t be able to tell what religion he is just by looking at him. You could also just pull the “oh, they must’ve made a mistake” bit or something when he realizes it’s the same guy…idk, my parents would never put me in the position to have to deal with this. But seriously, try to get into with Omar.</p>
<p>I agree with ejr1. None of these plans to convince your father will likely work. OP, I really feel sorry for you, but I think the best way to go along with this is to let your Dad make a fool of himself. Hopefully, and this sickens me to say it, they change the room assignment so you can go to UCSB and do the pre-college program. You shouldn’t have your education impacted by your father’s racist views.</p>
<p>Your father sounds so much like my late father-in-law (see racism post in parent cafe for more on him). Irrational. There’s nothing you can do. These kinds of people live in fear. Is he serious or blowing smoke about not allowing you to attend school? And does he mean college or just the camp? What does your mom say?</p>
<p>tr1p7s - With hundreds or thousands of new students each fall, this actually happens with some regularity to college and university Housing staff. As suggested earlier, call the Housing office and explain the situation. Let them know that it’s your Dad’s issue, not yours. They’ll have experience at explaining not only the law, but the principle that they handle educational matters directly with their college students. Your Dad may respond badly to that, but the Housing officials will be impressed that you wanted to communicate with them about it and they’ll want to help advocate for you as much as they can.</p>
<p>" he (my dad) claims that other students doing FSSP got note of this Omar and requested that he not be their roommate over and over until i got him and i am stupid to be okay with it. he’s really being a racist about this. saying if i apply for a federal position, then i would have to inform my employer that i had roomed with a muslim and they would not hire me etc etc. "</p>
<p>You are kidding? I had no idea. How in the world do the universities expect these kids to drop their prejudices when they do things like that? </p>
<p>I know a student who is a stereotypical southern white boy. He hunts, wears a cowboy hat, and dances to country western music. His roommate was a black guy who liked to listen to rap - loud rap - in their dorm room. I won’t lie and say these two became friends. As far as I know, they didn’t. But at least they each got a good dose of exposure to another culture. Granted, with such opposites, it may have only reinforced prejudices they already had and made things worse, not better.</p>
<p>You are kidding? I had no idea. How in the world do the universities expect these kids to drop their prejudices when they do things like that?</p>
<p>That’s the point, a lot of those students think like the original poster’s dad. They’re not open to experiencing other cultures. But if anything, it should make the racist dad a lot more comfortable, since the chance of being roomed with a minority is pretty small in SB because of this self-segregation.</p>
<p>^^
Or, a lot of these students are afraid of rooming with someone who is racist/want to see familiar faces in a college in which they are already the clear minority.</p>
<p>I wonder if part of your father’s reaction comes from his fear of losing you - losing the intimacy that you have had as a family and losing his sense of control over your values and behavior. Speaking as a parent of a college student, it was a little scary saying good-bye to my daughter and knowing that she was starting a new life, making friends with people I don’t know and will probably never meet, doing who-knows-what at all hours of the day and night. And I come from a family where everyone has attended college (and graduate school) for several generations back. The rant you describe seems like more than just simple racism. It sounds to me like a father who is terrified of letting go of his “little boy.”</p>
<p>Perhaps you can find a way to reassure your dad that you will still see him, talk to him, etc. and that UCSB won’t change the way you feel about him. Are there any other adults in your life who can help him with this transition?</p>