Roommate "found someone better" and moved out. What can we do?

rhandco
Fri, 19 Sep 2014 14:26:45 +0000

One thing - the OP notes that her brother “didn’t know where to put his towel after a shower”? So he was sharing a double with a private bathroom? SWEET! We were lucky that we had a sink in our dorm room, and the bathrooms were down the hall. Some had showers, sometimes you had to change floors to find a large bathroom with a shower (the dorms were not accessible so there were no “full bathrooms” with a shower sink and toilet).

As for the diabetes thing - I agree with the be realistic advice. No one can monitor him 24/7, he can check his sugars and try not to abuse himself regarding eating or exercising a lot more than usual. If he had a roommate who was never in the room, he clearly would not have any help if he had an incident while the roommate was out. Does your brother have a medic alert bracelet? Does he always carry glucose pills or Skittles (there are journal articles about chewing Skittles working better than glucose pills) on him? Does he carry insulin on him - maybe if he doesn’t have a pump, he might think about getting one when spring semester lets out and he has time to adjust to it (YMMV, I’m not a medical doctor etc.)?

If my new roommate had diabetes, I would want them to tell me because I might see them injecting insulin or if they passed out, I would know to call 911 and not just assume the roommate is drunk. At my HS, a kid a year older than me was seen injecting his thigh “with something” and another student reported him for possible drug use. So then he had to tell everybody that he was diabetic, something he was trying to hide.

And for the changing rooms thing - the OP is learning about that. Of course anyone can change rooms for any reason, as long as they get approval. I talked to my sophomore year roommate about one of us moving out, because we had totally different schedules and frankly, she was getting up at 6 am and waking me up early, and I rarely went to bed before midnight so wanted to sleep until 9 am. Together we figured out that it would be best if she moved out and I paid the rest of her contract (it was about mid-year). I was lucky my parents could afford to pay off the contract. I ended up living in a single, with a single bed and a sink, with my boyfriend junior year. He was in a double in his frat house, and left some of his stuff there, like winter clothes until they were needed. He had FA to pay for the room in the frat house, so essentially we both paid for that spot after we graduated, got married, and started paying off student loans.

Good luck to your brother - it sounds totally unrelated to him why his roommate moved out. It almost sounds like the guy fell in love , or maybe found someone from his town who he had wanted to room with in the first place but missed the deadline. It sounds like the roommate is happier where he is, and in my opinion, your brother won the lottery.