THREE LITTLE questions are all that stand between every first-year student and every first-year student's worst nightmare. They are: 1. Would you describe yourself as messy or neat? 2. Do you smoke? and 3. Do you care if your roommate smokes?
The nightmare, of course, is having to co-exist in a small room with the roommate from hell. All first-year students can do is answer the three aforementioned questions and pray to the Housing gods that the person they are assigned is someone they'll be able to live with for nine months.
If University Housing added a few more questions concerning roommate compatibility to the housing form, they could relieve some of the anxiety surrounding rooming assignments.
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The roommate from hell is a different person for everyone, of course. A future member of the University Democrats will fear being assigned to someone who thinks Rush Limbaugh is the Messiah. A die-hard heavy metal fan may pale at the thought of living with someone whose idea of decor is wall-to-wall Britney Spears posters. Personality differences such as these are hard to detect before people actually move in.
Though personality conflicts may be hard to avoid, there are some friction-causing issues besides merely smoking and neatness that are preventable. Right now, those two issues are the only ones considered when pairing roommates. A little more time and energy should be spent considering simple problems that can be avoided fairly easily.
It would make first-year life a little easier to bear if the Housing Division made some sort of effort to avoid pairing students who have major differences in living habits. Housing could attempt to avoid pairing night owls with early risers, or a person who needs absolute quiet for studying with a person who works best with Metallica blaring.
The University's sparse three-question compatibility survey is even more pathetic when compared to the measures employed by the housing staff of Davidson College. Davidson, a liberal arts school in North Carolina, is probably the most thorough school around when it comes to pairing freshman with compatible roommates ("The Art, Science, and Guesswork of Pairing Roommates," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Aug. 18).
Every summer Davidson's housing office sends freshmen packets that include the Myers-Briggs personality-assessment test, the results of which the staff uses to pair students with complementary personalities.
The packet also includes a housing preference card. On the card, students note their habits, what they like to do in their spare time, and even music preferences. The staff works with all of this information when making assignments.
Davidson considers other issues that would be a cause of friction: A vegan would not be paired with the son of a cattle-rancher; two people of clashing religious faiths would not be paired.
This is not to say that the school tries to pair students with people who are exactly like them so that they will get along. Instead, they try to match people who will not have any irreconcilable differences, and who will complement each other by being different but having a few things in common.
Granted, a school as large as the University would find it impossible to follow the example set by Davidson College, which has a freshman class of only 465 students. There are obvious limitations for a public university in this area, with a lack of staff and resources to make the exhaustive effort Davidson makes in roommate pairing. Although the University can't do as well as smaller schools, it could at least attempt to bridge the gap.
Living arrangements have a large impact on students' well-being, emotionally as well as academically. If a student is miserable because of constant conflict with his roommate or is unable to sleep or study in his room, his schoolwork and general enjoyment of University life will be negatively affected. Because a student's roommate can have a big impact on their lives, it is worth a little extra time -- perhaps even a little extra money through the hiring of more Housing staff -- to put more energy into the roommate pairing process.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Fridays in the Cavalier Daily.)
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