Keeping the Peace with College Roommates and Suitemates: The First-Night Talk

Personal Property

You need to reach agreement about how to handle issues of personal property. If someone has donated his or her television or stereo to the common space, does everyone have equal rights to it? We recommend that anything "donated" to the common space become the shared property of all roommates for the duration of the school year - meaning that if your stereo goes out there, you should expect to come back from class greeted by your roommate's rap music and have nothing
to say about it.

Anyone donating televisions, stereos, and the like to the common space should have an understanding with roommates or suitemates about what will happen if the equipment is broken during the year. How will you be compensated for your loss? Do you care? Will you share in repair or replacement costs equally? If so, will the new equipment become the property of everyone in the suite? If you are not comfortable with the arrangements being discussed, do not put your equipment in the common area.

Joint Costs

What, if anything, do you want to buy collectively for the suite? Perhaps everyone will want to chip in to buy a rug or couch for the common area. Maybe you've agreed that it is the best policy to buy a stereo and a television collectively so that everyone will be collectively on the hook if it is broken or stolen during the year. What about cable television? Linen or laundry service? A refrigerator - and how to stock it? Do you want to agree on a weekly "shopping list" of community items for the fridge, and have a schedule of who is responsible for stocking it? Do you want everyone to buy his or her own stuff and establish a rule that if it isn't yours, you shouldn't touch it? Or do you want to just collect receipts in a single place, agree that everything is communal, and handle reimbursements at a suite meeting once a month? There is no one right way to handle these issues. The only important thing is to discuss them up front and to reach consensus.

Cleanliness and What That Means

Everyone has a different idea of what it means to keep a room or a common area neat and clean. Are you a neat freak who irons and folds all your clothes and re­quires weekly dusting? If you are, you may find that you need to step back and accept something less than your concept of "clean." On the other hand, you should not have to wade through boxes of moldy half-eaten pizza and your roommate's dirty underwear, either. Once again, communication, flexibility, and compromise are the keys to success here.

Ground Rules for Suite Hours and Use of Common Space

Another important thing to establish in the suite meeting is a set of general ground rules governing conduct in the suite and use of your suite's common space. Do you want to establish some rules about when the suite can be open to others for social time and when it should be closed to outsiders for quiet time? You should discuss with your roommate and all members of your suite what their habits are likely to be. Do they plan to study at the library or in some other remote location? When they are writing papers, will they be doing so in the suite or out? Are they likely to be getting up early or working until the wee hours of the morning? If schedules appear to be incompatible, you'll need to work out a system so that one person's sleep is not routinely interrupted by another person's study habits.

Overnight Guests

The first thing to decide is whether, as a group, you are going to allow over­night guests at all. Assuming that you are, do you want to draw a distinction between, on the one hand, friends coming over and crashing in common areas and, on the other, boyfriends, girlfriends, or "random hookups" coming over and displacing a roommate from his or her bed for a night (or longer). Or, perhaps, do you want to ban overnight guests only during midterm and exam weeks, or during weeks when any of the roommates has a significant paper or project due?

Telephone Messages

Although much of the telephonic communication on campus is now done by cell phone, most students still choose to have a land line in their college dorm as well. Even if your college telecommunications system allows for student-specific voicemail (most now do), there are still those times when you will answer the phone and have to take a message for one of your absent roommates.

It is easy to avoid conflict in this area: have a central place (a message board, a corkboard, or something similar) where everyone agrees and understands that messages will be left. If you take a call for a roommate, be sure to take down the correct information and then immediately post the message in the agreed-on place. Nothing frustrates roommates and can cause ill will or misunderstanding more quickly than undelivered or forgotten messages.

Smoking and Drinking in the Room

If one or more of your roommates are occasional or regular smokers, the ground rules about smoking will need to be worked out up front as well. Most of these issues are teased out by the roommate questionnaire, as colleges almost never put a smoker in the same room as a nonsmoker. Nevertheless, not everyone answers roommate questionnaires, and even if they do, not everyone answers them honestly. Habits also change, particularly for students who are away from home for the first time.

Because this is as much an issue of health as it is of choice, the general default rule should bar smoking in bedrooms or common spaces unless all roommates agree to the contrary. Try to avoid being judgmental or strident in establishing these ground rules, though. In most cases, a calmly expressed preference for the room and common areas to remain smoke free is all you will need to do to get the cooperation of your smoking roommate(s).

Parties or "Partying" in Your Room or in Common Areas

On a related subject, you should also discuss the use of your rooms or common spaces for campus parties where drinking and other legally questionable activities might occur. Look to a couple of trusted upperclassmen for guidance on the issue of how your campus police or administration polices such activity. In many cases, you will discover that your campus police and college administration tend to "look the other way" when there are in-room parties or larger, dormwide parties, opting instead to concentrate on such issues as the prevention of theft and violent crime on campus. Knowing this may help calm roommates concerned about possible legal or disciplinary ramifications. If you discover, however, that your college closely enforces rules about underage drinking and the like, then respecting the concerns of your roommates is of paramount importance. Take your lead from responsible upperclassmen at your college or university on these issues.

Decoration of Personal and Common Areas

Obviously, if you share sleeping space with one or more roommates, any common areas of that space must be decorated by the agreement of all. It is not appropriate for anyone to take unilateral action to co-opt common space by, for example, moving a desk into a common room or common area without the agreement of everyone else. You may also want to establish some ground rules about whether the door to your suite, the walls of your common areas, the exterior of your windows, or any other common spaces can be used for political expression.

Respecting Differences

College is all about discovering, learning about, and embracing or at least respecting diversity. To get along in the dorm, in the classroom, and in the world, we all need to learn this lesson early.

You should not assume that you and your roommates are going to agree on the color of your couch, the justifications (or lack thereof) for the war in Iraq, the efficiency of capitalist markets, or the existence of God. You will be up late at night debating Tarantino's new movie, biblical allusions in Moby-Dick, the merit of the war on drugs, why marijuana is illegal when alcohol isn't, and the meaning of life.

Handling Disagreements

Rest assured that no matter how good your relationship is with your roommates, and no matter how clearly your expectations are laid out, disagreements will still arise. It may be about something as simple as an undelivered phone message from a significant other that causes an unnecessary misunderstanding for one of your roommates, or it may be about something as serious as a breach of trust.

Whatever the specific facts, you should establish some ground rules up front about how to handle these disputes when they arise.

Respecting Reciprocal Privacy and Privilege

For good or for ill, the roommate relationship is an intensely personal one. You will learn more about your college roommate(s) than you know about most people - including intimate details of their personal lives, finances, family, and the like. Discussions with your roommate(s) about any of these things are intended to be private, and should not be gossiped about or discussed openly with others, either in or out of the presence of the person who shared the information with you.

You may find that learning about your roommates' personal lives is an enriching experience that teaches you valuable lessons and draws you closer together. Or you may find, particularly when your roommate attempts to draw you into his or her intense family or severe personal or emotional problems, that it is too much for you to handle.

The "Most Important" Question to Ask Your Roommates

So at last we come to the most important question you can possibly ask your roommate(s), the question that more than any other will help ensure that you get along.

Ready?

Here it is:

"What is the most important thing I need to know and respect about you or your things that will help us get along this year?"

This question will inevitably prompt a response and follow-up questions. You will be amazed at how easily it gets you into the areas you most need to discuss, and at how much you will learn about your roommate(s) by listening to the response you get.

Try it during your first-night talk.

Campus Confidential Mentors and Uber-Mentors:

Campus Confidential contains the collective advice of a a diverse group of people who have traveled the road to college. Some are recent college graduates who can counsel you on the college experience as it is today. Other are a few years removed from their college days and can provide a longer view of the decisions you will need to make before, during, and after college. Here is a little bit about the mentors and uber-mentors in these articles.

Dan Bissell – Campus Confidential Uber-Mentor

Portland, Oregon

B.A. Middlebury College cum laude, 1993. Major: Geology

M. D. University of Colorado School of Medicine, Adler Scholar, 2002

Tom Teh Chiu – Campus Confidential Uber-Mentor

Brooklyn, New York

B. A. Yale University, 1993. Major: double major in Chemistry and Music

M. M. Juilliard School, 1995

M Juilliard School, 2001

Jim Bright – Campus Confidential Uber-Mentor

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

B. A. Duke University, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1997. Major: History

Amanda Cramer – Campus Confidential Uber-Mentor

Paso Robles, California

B.A. Cornell University Phi Beta Kappa, 1993. Major: Mathematics

Graduate study in food science – Enology, University of California at Davis 1997-2000

Zoe Robbins – Campus Confidential Uber-Mentor

Gouldsboro, Maine

B.A. (1) Wellesley College magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1997. Major: Economics

B.A. (2) University of Pennsylvania, 2001. Major: Nursing

Carolyn Koegler – Campus Confidential Uber-Mentor

Hopkinton, New Hampshire

B. A. Tufts University, cum laude, 1993. Double major: History and Spanish

Erik Norton – Campus Confidential Uber-Mentor

Boston, Massachusetts

B. A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1993. Major: Mathematics

Lyndsee Dickson – Campus Confidential Mentor

Concord, New Hampshire

B.A. New York University, cum laude, 2004. Major: East Asian studies

Kevin Donovan – Campus Confidential Mentor

Somerville, Massachusetts

B.A. Boston College, honors in the major, 1993. Major: English, Minor: Creative Writing

Tiffany Chan – Campus Confidential Mentor

Concord, New Hampshire

B.S. New York University, 2005. Major: Communication Science

Erica Eubanks – Campus Confidential Mentor

Memphis, Tennessee

B.A. Tennessee State University, National Deans List, 2003. Major: Criminal Justice

Dave Irwin – Campus Confidential Mentor

Carlisle, Massachusetts

B.A. Middlebury College departmental honors, 2004. Major: American Civilization, Minor: Education

Chase Johnson – Campus Confidential Mentor

London, England

B. A. Duke University, with Phi Alpha Theta distinction in history, 2005. Major: History

Aaron Paskalis – Campus Confidential Mentor

Magnolia, Massachusetts

West Point Military Academy, then transferred to UMass Amherst

B. A. University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2005. Major: Legal studies