Think You Have a Crazy Roommate?

By Alexandra Beggs

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A roommate who leaves their dishes in the sink for a month is one thing. A roommate who brings home a different girl every night, including a gold-toothed cafeteria worker, is another.

These horror stories are not a rarity on college campuses. In fact, it seems like every student has either had a “crazy roommate,” or knows someone who has. But students often take the passive route; when confrontation is necessary, they back away. When the problem becomes out of control, many students do not know which way to turn, and may end up living in a barely tolerable environment.

Danny Nelson, a junior at Texas A&M University, was a victim of fate in the lottery all college students dread—the roommate lottery. When he was a freshman at the University of Houston, Nelson’s roommate wasn’t a problem during the day. But, Nelson said, “At night, I would wake up to my roommate having sex with either his girlfriend, or some random girl he picked up.” When one of these women was a campus cafeteria worker with a gold tooth, Nelson said seeing her at the cafeteria made him lose his appetite.

Warning signs began on day one. Nelson asked his roommate, Aaron (whose name has been changed for privacy), a football player, why he wasn’t living in the athlete apartments. Aaron said he used to live there, but an ex-girlfriend, along with family members, did a drive-by shooting on the apartments, shooting the walls but not injuring anyone. The police investigated and when they found out he was linked to the shooting, Aaron was forced to move out. Although Nelson was hesitant to believe the story, and most of what Aaron said, it foreshadowed events to come.

After putting up with numerous nights of his roommate’s escapades, Nelson decided it was time for confrontation. But the only response he received from Aaron, Nelson said, “was inviting me to join, unless it was his girlfriend, or that I was welcome to watch.”

Realizing that the situation was not going to improve, Nelson feared another confrontation because he described Aaron as “a pretty violent guy.” According to Nelson, Aaron had frequented the court house about five times during their semester together. “He told me he was a convicted felon,” Nelson said, although again doubting the truth of the statement.

Aaron’s move-out day finally came. But he did not go gently. He failed to schedule a leaving appointment, turn in his key, and, “Destroyed his trashcan, tore up the furniture, and was fined around $500 for the damage.” Nelson said. But the storm had passed.

Susan Fee, author of “My Roommate is Driving Me Crazy,” says that sex in the room is “too far.” While students tolerate a lot from their roommates, she says, some behavior is unacceptable. When dealing with a problematic roommate, Fee advises that students “start early, and start small.” She says situations often go from bad to worse because students fail to talk to resident assistants or do not confront their roommates when the behavior is initiated.

The problem students have with confrontation is that they avoid speaking “face to face,” Fee says, which is usually the easiest solution. Often the problematic roommate has communication issues, such as having awkward confrontations through notes, email, or instant messages, when both students are in the same room.

She said these methods of avoidance are not helpful. Students need to speak to their roommates, but not in an accusatory tone. When talking about the issues, students should keep the focus on, “how is this going to work for both of us.” Fee says, “Do not wait until the student gets a clue, because they won’t.” Students assume that eventually their roommate will realize their fault, but instead the problems grow.

Fee recalled a male student who complained that his roommate was a strict environmentalist who refused to bathe in order to conserve water. He also rejected soap and deodorant for similar reasons, and the result was an unbearable odor. But Fee also notes that a lack of bathing is a possible (and common) sign of depression. She says, “Students need to recognize what’s a dangerous situation.” Those issues are especially crucial, and students should not hesitate to inform the proper resident counselors.

Many roommate issues are not as extreme as these, but they can become the topic of “whose roommate is crazier” contests. Jason Lang, a recent graduate of New York University, had a roommate who collected reptiles.

While Lang attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, he shared a house with three other students. Because one of the roommates was frightened by the collection of reptiles, the snakes were kept outside in a shed. Joe (whose name has also been changed), the roommate who owned the snakes, snuck one of his three-foot long snakes into the house and hid it under his bed because it was ill.

Lang recalled the scene, “His room also had a lot of junk in it, including his bass guitars, a refrigerator, a crazy stereo system, and all the little critters he fed his snakes. That end of the house frequently sounded like a rock concert and smelled like a petting zoo.”

One night the roommates decided to throw a house party, while the clandestine snake was still residing under Joe’s bed. A group of students found the snake, and somehow it was released into the party.

“I was in the kitchen at the time and suddenly all this screaming broke out from the one end of the house. I ran over and was eventually directed to the snake huddled in a ball behind a couch in the living room,” Lang said.

But the snake had caused a mass hysteria in the house, and Megan, the roommate who claimed that a traumatic event in her childhood had created her phobia of snakes, “panicked herself into such a fit that she immediately ran into an adjacent bathroom and threw up,” said Lang.

Lang said he would never forget that chaotic night, “Drunken college students and a loose snake in a party yields one hell of an eruption.”

While many students may not have such comic memories of roommate tribulations, each story sparks another. The universality of “roommate issues” is just one of the many new challenges that college students must face, endure, or embrace. The outrageous stories can be fodder for writing material, dinner conversation, or evidence in court. But when it seems like everyone has had at least one crazy roommate experience, there can only be one conclusion: college students, across the country, are all a little crazy.