The Freshman Experience: Roommates From Hell

October 1, 2011 6:00 pm     Posted in Back to School, College, Reality  Leah Kuttruff - College of Charleston g+ page


By Leah Kuttruff

Raise your hand if you like your roommate. Okay… now raise your hand if you’ve ever been tempted to tuck her into a straightjacket. That’s what I thought. Approximately 50/50. In fact, I’ve met more people with roommate problems in the past few weeks than without. Luckily, I’ve been blessed with a roommate whom I adore. We’re polar opposites, but in the best way. She’s the little to my big. Our other friend wasn’t so lucky.

My college made a miniscule HUGE mistake when plotting out the housing plan for the year and ended up having to temporarily triple up some double rooms. Our unlucky suite-mates experienced snafu quick-fix firsthand. The original two girls in the room were anything but thrilled from right off the bat, and at first I sympathized with them. After all, that’s not what they bargained for! But after meeting the third girl, my roomie and I immediately bonded with her. And by the time they found her some new housing, we had become good friends. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for her roommates, and after a bitter battle involving Residence Life, some yelling, the police, writing witness statements, and a groundless order for no contact between the two parties, she was relocated to a room across the building.

Two other girls who share a suite together recently told me that they finally broke down and had a meeting with the rest of their roommates, particularly to confront one of them about her strange and disruptive habits. In their dorm, there are five girls to a single bathroom, and apparently the doors are capable of being locked. Twice every day, one of the girls locks all entrances to the shared bathroom and showers/does other miscellaneous things for close to two hours. Additionally, she has yet to unpack her large trunks of clothing, and slams them around at the crack of dawn as she tries to find whatever article of clothing she is looking for. The room meeting led to a one-on-one chat, which led to tears and a runaway roomie. Luckily, she turned up an hour later (with still-bloodshot eyes); but the problem still hadn’t been solved.

So what’s the deal with these crazy roommate situations? Each party must think that they are correct in their actions, or they wouldn’t have started them in the first place. But how can these problems be remedied- if at all? RAs can only seem to do so much, and every residence office of every school wants nothing more than as many housing contracts signed as possible. It’s up to us, the students, to strive for healthy relationships between our housemates; after all, we’ve got about seven months left with these people. We’ve got to maintain civility to maintain the peace.

Share some of your juicy roommate stories or advice below!

10 Comments on "The Freshman Experience: Roommates From Hell"

  1. oygyummy says:
    Sat, 1st Oct 20118:13 pm 

    My roommate got a FurReal cat. A girl on my hall got a baby doll. They've been stealing each other's toy and hiding it. It's really funny – until it's 2AM on a Saturday and I get woken up by the door slamming open and the two screaming and laughing at each other.

    One time this happened (at about 5 in the afternoon) and my roommate chased the other girl to her room, where shouting and arguing immediately broke out – in five languages, since the baby-girl speaks French, my roommate speaks Spanish, the cat-girl's roommate speaks Mandarin, one of the other girls speaks Vietnamese, and the other girls only spoke English. It was highly entertaining.

  2. Shaina says:
    Sat, 1st Oct 20118:29 pm 

    I never had a totally crazy roommate, but after four years in college (one spent in a sorority house) I have lived with countless different personalities-the OCD cleaning girl, the emotional girlfriend girl, the looks-obsessed girl, the study-aholic, the nonstop party-girl, etc etc. Living with all of these types of girls has not only helped me realize what I don't want to turn into, but it has also helped me learn to be a lot more tolerant of others. After all, you never know what type of "girl" they might call you behind your back, so your best bet is to be as nice and accepting of your roommate no matter how bizarre she might be.

  3. Random RA says:
    Sun, 2nd Oct 201110:28 pm 

    I'm an RA and there really is NOT that much we can do if roommates won't cooperate. I just had a religious resident throw a bible at his gay roommate. He then proceeded to throw another bible at his roommates gay fraternity members…….. People >.<

  4. Julie says:
    Mon, 3rd Oct 201111:57 am 

    I went to a school in Michigan, and during the winter when we had sub zero temperatures my roommates refused to turn the heat on because they wanted to save money on electricity! I tried not to argue and just buy a space heater, but when they found out I had that they started turning off the electric to my room when I was gone! It was awful.

  5. Everett says:
    Mon, 3rd Oct 201111:58 am 

    My first roommate ever fried everything he ate. Our dorm smelled like McDonalds.

  6. chelseykelsey says:
    Mon, 3rd Oct 201112:00 pm 

    One day my roommate and I came home to find our third roommate sitting in front of the tv, shaving her legs. No towel on the carpet. No shaving cream. No water. Just her and her razor, shaving her legs. Ouch.

  7. cera says:
    Sat, 10th Dec 201112:45 pm 

    My first roommate never spoke to me, not once. And then she moved out without telling me, leaving me with a bunch of things that she didn't want anymore…

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