<p>I think the daughter of your friend needs to ask for a new room or an agreement that this guy never stays over. If the dictator wants to have sleepovers, she needs to get an apartment, a motel, or a legit single room with no walk throughs. What a miserable sounding situation given the girl’s family history of retaliation…</p>
<p>Songman
</p>
<p>Finally!</p>
<p>Rhumbob - you’re right. Doormat 101</p>
<p>Who cares who concocted this setup? The guy is there illegally and the fact that not all of the roommates are bothered is not the issue. If this were my girl, this matter would’ve been resolved by now.</p>
<p>This horse seems to have been beaten to death, but I do have to say that if the parent is choosing to manage the situation, she needs to be clear that she is concerned about retaliation. If she is choosing to model rather than insist on the DD managing herself, I would strongly suggest she place the emphasis on liability and squatting vs the confict bw roommates. She should also make sure that the girl is put on notice by the school that she is on probation as far as the school is concerned, and if there are any complaints regarding noncompliance or other issues she will be considered in violation of her housing agreement and it will be voided. If the roommates do NOT report repeat violations, they are technically also in violation, and they should be clear that they will not take this risk for him. The bully WILL punish her roommates - it’s a certainty. People like this always get worse before they get better. I think the DD should go with the Mom to see how it can be handled, but then the confrontation should be anonymous. I do think the Mom should coach her daughter on how to say “No, that won’t work for me.” You don’t have to be mean - you just have to start with the word NO. If the person continues to wheedle, you just repeat “no.” Calm voice. Firm. Do not escalate, and do not capitulate. If they get loud, get quieter, or say “Yelling won’t matter - NO.” That said, someone who has to “mull this over” may have modeled doormat behavior in the past.</p>
<p>Enquiring minds want to know. ;)</p>
<p>Mommusic- so an update- It seems the roomate that was friendly with the dictator is getting sick of all of it. FINALLY! Especially the fact that the boyfriend needs to enter their space in order to get into the dictator’s room. So the RA was called in or the RA noticed what was going on. The dictator has gone home every weekend so my neighbors daughter and the other roomate get a break on weekends. They need to get some nerve and end this nonsense! My neighbor was going to visit the college but then with her crazy schedule she did not visit. She is a single mom and works many hours so her DTR suggested she wait as the RA was involved…so they are heading on the right track ,just not fast enough I think…</p>
<p>Good to know that they are making some progress, albeit slowly. It will have been a learning experience for them, anyway.</p>
<p>Yes, that knowledge will certainly come in handy when they get their first real job and first apartment and need to begin interviewing roommates. They’ll know exactly what to ask on the boyfriend front. and what to put in a roommate agreement.</p>
<p>Roommate agreement … that got me giggling. All I could think about was Sheldon and Leonard’s roommate agreement on Big Bang Theory! :)</p>
<p>In post #173, the OP wrote, “It seems the rooms do not have a common area and the boyfriend has to pass through the daughter’s room to get to the single room.” Separate from anything about boyfriend/nonstudent having to walk through the OP’s neighbor’s room to get the “dictator” student’s room, I think this kind of dorm set-up sounds very strange. Any time of the day or night someone can enter a dorm room not only from the hall but from the single room? The only places I have seen anything like that is when students rent space in houses that have been carved up into apartments designed to have the largest number of “rooms” even when some might have been a tiny sunporch or large closet! They do that to get supercheap rent. But to pay dorm prices for the set-up described by the OP would be undesirable even if there was no boyfriend. It even seems possibly unsafe at night to have people walking through a dark room to get in or out of the single room. To me this is not just an issue of assertiveness and negotiation but the entire arrangement of the two rooms is problematic.</p>
<p>Well without giving the school away I had a chance to see a photo of the building. It is very old. But heck it has IVY growing all over so it must be worth the inconvenience? :). The building looks like it was built in the early 1900’s. It is possible that they reconfigured rooms to retrofit the old building and came up with this scheme. I agree, unreasonable by modern standards</p>
<p>This is not an unusual set up for an older dorm, especially if it was an all-female dorm. When the dorms were first built, the large room was originally more of a sitting room, or parlour, and the smaller rooms off of it were the bedrooms for the student and, in some cases there was an even smaller room for the student’s “attendant”. If you think about it, many doubles and triples in older dorms are one room with 2-3 people shareing the one room, which provides less privacy than someone walking through a room to get to another room.</p>
<p>My daughter went to a camp at Dartmouth and the set-up sounds just like this room. You opened the door into one room, walked through to a door to the next room. The second room also had all closet space. VERY interesting set-up.</p>
<p>This set up is actually very common in dorms at old New England colleges, regardless of whether they were originally all-female or all-male, for precisely the reason jym626 states. Gutting them to provide cookie-cutter accommodations is hardly optimal from the point of view of historic preservation, not to mention “charm.”</p>
<p>Hadn’t thought about the preservation factor, Sop14’smom. Good point.</p>
<p>Because the closets were in the “attendant’s” room, in newer days, with the front room (sitting room) now being used as a bedroom as well, they typically place one or more wooden armoires in it for closet space. The rooms (sitting rooms) are pretty big and can easily accomodate the armoires.</p>
<p>And another piece of history-- in the main building of my undergrad college (designed by famed architect James Renwick) which had the dorm room setup as described in this thread, the “attendant’s” room had a window that opened onto the hallway, whereas the students window faced outdoors, but on the side of the building that did not get direct sunlight (heaven forbid their delicate skin might get damaged).</p>
<p>And the dorm hallway was extremely wide. Made such that (reportedly) the students could exercise in the hallway and, more importantly, two girls could walk by each other in their hoop skirts and not touch each other. I kid you not.</p>
<p>I’ve seen a room just like this at Wesleyan. Any double has the feature of extremely shared space. Add more kids in and mix genders and it gets complicated.</p>
<p>LOL, jym, I heard about the hoop skirts when we visited, and those hallways *are *wide, but not the rest of it. My junior year I was in a suite that was formed from what had originally been two suites, so there was a fire door between two of the rooms. We had four single bedrooms and a nice living room, but there was no way to get to a bathroom without walking through a bedroom. My bedroom was of the attendant type. Miniscule.</p>
<p>The problem is really that schools are cramming more students into their dorms than they were originally designed for in order to maximize the payoff on their facilities. And given that most students are sexually active, these living situations are simply insupportable, IMHO. I really think that everyone benefits from A Room of One’s Own. My S had a good setup his freshman year: a 2-person suite where each student had a very small bedroom, big enough basically for just the bed and desk, connected by a small common room. The wardrobes were in the common room, but it was big enough for their minifridge and a futon couch. Or they could have had a few beanbag chairs. In any case, no one had to walk through anyone else’s bedroom, and each person had a place where they could go and close the door. But this dorm was purpose-built, probably in the 60s. Senior year, he lived in one of those older 2-room, 2-person suites. The outer room was clearly intended to be a study, with a small fireplace (non-working, alas) and a coat closet. The inner room, with the big closet, was intended to be the bedroom. I suppose that he and his friend could have chosen to put both beds in the inner room and both desks in the outer room, but they chose the 2-bedroom option instead.</p>
<p>SOP 14’s Mom’s post above pointed out the value of the historical preservation of these buildings, rather than retrofitting them to meet todays living arrangements. It made me think about the historical fun facts (which are hopefully true) vs the probable tall tales that are perpetuated at many shcools, and thought it would be fun to share some. So I started another thread where we could share stories about schools’ historical facts (please correct any errors) as well as some probable tall tales. Please share. It will be fun to hear abut the history of schools. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1395741-college-historical-facts-probable-tall-tales.html#post14876075[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1395741-college-historical-facts-probable-tall-tales.html#post14876075</a></p>
<p>JYM, could you explain about the “attendant” you mentioned, not familiar with that in college dorm setting. Wondered if the “attendant” served as a chaperone, did each female student have one, etc. Thanks</p>
<p>We are talking 150 or so years ago, when some single ladies had assistants help them with hair, dressing, etc. and would go to school with their staff, as it were.</p>