Before college, I thought a roommate was supposed to be your forever friend, the person who becomes your bridesmaid or your child’s godparent, the person you stay up with for Ramen and late-night conversations.
I was so wrong.
Roommates are exhausting. After a single semester, many students clamor to get into solo apartments and away from the whole roommate experience. SUNY Plattsburgh, for one, has responded by making more solo rooms available on campus. After you hear the following stories, you’ll better understand why. The following names have all been anonymized.
1) Lack of Boundaries
A sophomore at SUNY Plattsburgh described a roommate who basically invited her boyfriend to move into their dorm room.
“We were only two weeks into school but she had already rubbed me the wrong way because she always smelled… she wasn’t taking care of basic hygiene,” said the sophomore. “She also had a boyfriend that would always come over to our room without even asking me and they would never leave the room. One time, he came over to spend the night and I fell asleep because I had to get up early in the morning — but, I’m a light sleeper and I kept hearing these weird noises. When I woke up to peek… she was on top [of him].”
She said she “felt like a guest in her own room.” By the time she got a room switch approved, her roommate’s boyfriend was practically living there.
2) Lack of Privacy
One male student we’ll call John described how his roommate was extremely nosy and paranoid, assuming that everyone was talking about him. One day, John was doing homework and left his laptop open while going to the bathroom. The roommate started searching through his laptop and his messages, confronting John when he walked back into the room.
They never spoke again after that semester.
3) Theft
A junior, let’s call her Jen, was practically living with a thief. It started with snacks. It progressed to wearing Jen’s jewelry and clothes. Jen confronted the roommate, who said it was mere “coincidence” that they had the same things. Jen set up a sting.
“I [had] just got a new package,” Jen said, “so I didn’t even open it. I set my phone up and walked out the room to see what she would do next. Come to find out — I was right the entire time. Not even a minute later she was in my closet trying to see what I got in the package, probably planning what she was going to steal next.”
Jen switched roommates soon afterward.
4) Stink
Junior Chris was paired with one of the funkiest smelling humans he ever met. A month into the semester, his roommate hadn’t done any laundry. Dirty clothes were piled in a corner of the room. It got so bad that anytime Chris walked into the room the smell smacked him in his face.
“He left his side of the room filled to the brim,” Chris said. “Garbage was piled up everywhere. Once he opened his fridge, it would make our entire suite stink. [Residents] could smell him through the walls.”
Double rooms aren’t the only horror stories. Another tale begins with four girls who were matched up in a suite by residential campus housing. They all agreed to split cleaning duties, but one of the girls didn’t exactly buy into the agreement. She left dishes in the sink and trash strewn all over. The other girls described it like “living in a barn.” The girls kept asking their fourth roommate to keep her word of agreement, and then the unexpected happened.
The girls woke up again to find the trash and dishes piled up, so they went to her room to confront her. They found it empty — cleaned out to the bone. She’d ghosted them.
5) Cyberbullying
Hygiene issues aren’t even the worst of it. A sophomore student, Carl, was cyberbullied by his roommate within the first three weeks of the semester. Carl kept seeing posts on YikYak that maligned his character, things that only his roommate would know.
The roommate denied it, but the posts continued and gained traction among the student body. Carl saw people talking about him and laughing. Carl’s roommate even made fake Instagram accounts pretending to be him and posting weird things.
Carl ultimately demanded a room change. That experience alone made him never want another roommate again.
6) Homophobia
LGBTQ student Rachel was ostracized by her roommate simply for being non-binary. The roommate was paranoid around Rachel, refusing to be in the same room as her, apparently because she thought Rachel was coming onto her and wanted to do things to her, simply because she wasn’t heterosexual.
7) Nudism
Another student told me she had a roommate who hated wearing clothes in bed, when in the bathroom, and even when just chilling in the room. She just refused to put on clothes. Her excuse was that they were both girls, so she shouldn’t have to feel obligated to cover her body.
In conclusion
All of these experiences underscore why students are increasingly opting into single rooms. Many people believe that their dorm room should be their haven rather than a battlefield because of the demands of social pressures, part-time jobs, internships and classes.
Colleges are profiting from it. Many include “buy-out” options, which allow students to reserve a single room in a typically communal area for an additional cost. That sum can surpass $5,000 annually at some schools.
But if that’s what it costs to avoid getting bullied on YikYak or finding an old dirty Q tip on the sink, so be it.
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