Roommates

emilia
Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:00:55 +0000

The survey is moderately long - they have both direct questions that might be a bit blunt (“how would you react if your roommate borrowed something of yours without asking?”, “do you have any feelings about roommates with different sexual orientations?”) as well as prompts where you can say as little or as much as you please (“if you could have a romantic or torrid relationship with anyone, real or fictional, who would it be, and why?”, “describe your favorite memory,” “describe your ideal friend” etc.) One form is confidential (the one with the blunter questions) and is only for the roommate selectioin committee to look at, while the second one is sent to your roommate or roommates. My advice to you or anyone who will be starting Rice this fall would be BE AS EXPLICIT AS POSSIBLE on your form. If you are a partyer or plan to be, say so; if you don’t plan to party/drink, make that clear and mention that you want a roommate with a similar mentality. If you feel uncomfortable rooming with someone of a different sexual orientation than you, say that.

Like torrestowers, my roommate situation sucks, though in all fairness her true character wasn’t accurately conveyed in her roommate form and it wasn’t until I got to know her that our problems started. I know of many other people in my college who’ve had bad matchings, and to be honest, unless your roommate gets violent and swings a heavy floor lamp at you (which happened last year), you’re stuck with who you’ve got for the whole year and the college coordinators aren’t effective in rectifying these situations.

And yes, if you know someone who’s also going to be a freshman this year and want to room with them, you can both write that on your form and you’ll get assigned to the same college rooming together. Conversely, if you know of someone you DON’T want to room with, you can write that too, and you won’t be stuck with that person.