<p>If the D should return to the suite and find the boyfriend alone in the common area, she should immediately call 911/campus security and report an intruder/stranger/(stalker! molester! potential rapist!) in her suite. Act like she never saw him before. Seriously, this could be a safety issue. You don’t know this guy.</p>
<p>Why doesn’t the mom just pay for an apartment so the “dictator roommate” can live with the boyfriend?</p>
<p>Your neighbor/her parents are paying for the dorm room. They are not paying to have their D be intruded upon by a strange man in what they were told would be an all-girl suite. This is not in the contract. Don’t even talk to the roommate. Just call housing and report a squatter immediately. He has no right to be there.</p>
<p>Those who advocate getting parents involved do so because they are making the correct assumption that this is easier to resolve for someone with more experience in conflict resolution. This is a learning opportunity for the kids to resolve this conflict and they should do this amongst themselves before escalating it to the administration. If I were an administrator, the first thing I would ask is what you had done to resolve this amongst your selves. You can always bump this up the line later if the roommate is uncooperative.</p>
<p>FWIW, Yale does assign singles and doubles to freshman and there is no rental differential. The expectation is you keep that room for the year unless you want to offer to give it up mid-year which I don’t recall to be common. That may not be “fair” but it resolves the conflict of one student “calling” the single. As a sophomore, you choose your roommates and are in a better position to negotiate mid-year room switches.</p>
<p>Yale-The administration hopefully doesn’t condone non-students living in their dorms and would kick the boy out whether the girls wanted him there or not. So “resolving the issue among themselves” is actually a non-issue for an administrator.</p>
<p>Perhaps I am naive, but your neighbors story is not making a lot of sense to me. How could the boyfriend be living in the suite? Did he move his clothes in? Where is he showering? Where is he eating? Where is he parking his car and how is he gaining re-entry into the Dorm when he goes out? Is the college located in his home town and he is running home during the day to shower and get clean clothes? Certainly he will not gain entry to the college cafeteria. My sense is that the situation is more of a boyfriend visiting too often(which should be addressed as well).</p>
<p>It is totally possible for him to be doing all those things with the assist of his GF especially if there is no oversight/ sign in monitoring ect. The suite has a shower, he can use his GF’s card for access and meals, he brought a change or two of clothes( and I’m sure she’ll do his laundry for him to boot) and who said he had a car, most freshman aren’t allowed cars on campus he probably took a bus or her mother dropped him off. This is a case of a BF who has nothing better to do and can apparently quite easily get away with crashing indefinitely with his GF.</p>
<p>When I was in college, an older friend had her boyfriend living in her room. For a couple of years. Of course, she had a single. (And he was in fact a Harvard student, albeit a graduate student. ) </p>
<p>I really think that calling the police on this guy and claiming that he is an unknown intruder is not something that a decent person would do. I also think that running directly to the housing authorities is wrong. No, the roommate should not have her boyfriend living permanently or semi-permanently in a shared suite unless everyone else agrees. No, she should not simply assume that she gets to have the single because of this guy. But come on, let’s not go overboard!</p>
<p>The rest of the girls need to sit down with the GF and inform her that they do not wish to have her BF–or anyone else’s BF-- living permanently in their suite. Visits of a reasonable length (define it) are fine, residence is not. They need to find out how long she intends to have him there. If she says he is getting a place and will move out next week, they could say okay, as long as he’s out by next Tuesday or whatever. They need to establish some common ground rules that are not draconian, because they will have to abide by them, too. If the girl refuses to comply or negotiate, then they need to bring in the RA. If the RA’s facilitation does not result in an agreement, THEN they should go to the campus housing authority.</p>
<p>Nobody’s mother should be involved: not the bossymom, not the neighbor (except as a sounding board and coach behind the scenes).</p>
<p>Periwinkle, I could dredge up articles about an admitted Harvard student who killed her roommate, for god’s sake. It has happened.</p>
<p>I’m not vouching for the boyfriend. I have no idea who he is. The GF–and her mother!-- are in fact vouching for him, if that is even relevant. </p>
<p>I believe I made it clear that I do not think it is reasonable that he is living there and I think he should leave. I just don’t think that it is time to get hysterical about it. These kids need to find some intestinal fortitude and negotiate with their roommate like the adults they aspire to be. </p>
<p>It’s not a matter of “negotiating” b/c the boyfriend is not allowed to LIVE in the girls’ dorm suite for free, which is what seems to be happening.</p>
<p>They need to TELL the roommate that the grace period for visits has expired, and to move the guy out. Today. Or they will take it to the authorities who certainly can enforce the rules.</p>
<p>^Does anyone remember the story of the Mom who moved into a double for the first week of school? </p>
<p>I agree with Consolation, the first step is for the roommates get some spine and set limits on visitors. Ones they can live with if they should have boyfriends of their own. Obviously if the girl refuses, then they go up the chain of command.</p>
<p>Sorry, still have problems with the accuracy of this story. There are obvious safety, security and legal liability issues here, ones that most RA’s are trained to be on the look out for. It is hard for me to believe that a University/College would be so lax as to not recognize that a squatter was among their student population. Further, while perhaps there is one “church mouse” amongst the group of girls who is afraid to speak up, are we to believe that every other girl (and their parents) have chosen to remain silent? This young man has been vetted by no one at the University and according to the OP is homeless and unemployed.Doesn’t sound good to me. What young woman or parent would allow this situation to continue for even a short period of time?</p>
<p>With all the tragedies that we read about on college campuses, I would submit that it is negligent for these girls AND their parents to not speak up and get the situation resolved. If the story is accurate, there is a HUGE security problem on this campus that needs to be addressed.</p>
<p>I too can’t believe every girl in that suite is afraid to confront the alpha girl. I know both of my kids would have done something about it after 2 days, and I am not sure if they would have let this girl get the single.</p>
<p>Mathmom, I have not heard that story but there is an old boarding school story that continues to circulate. Apparently the mother was so worried about her son fitting into boarding school the first year, that she hid in his closet the first night to witness how he and his roommate interacted. Don’t know how true the story is, but I got a good laugh!</p>
<p>I don’t know if it makes sense to confront the room mate. She already knows that what she is doing is wrong. If the girls give her an ultimatum and 24 hours to get him out that gives the girl 24 hours to decide on a scheme then she has 24 hours to concoct lies and plan retribution. I think the girls need to go directly to the housing authority to find out what the protocol is to get him out. </p>
<p>The room mate is a bully. She is skilled in lying and manipulating people. She is betting on:</p>
<ol>
<li>The other room mates being too scared to challenge her.</li>
<li>Being able to manipulate them into doing what she wants.</li>
<li>The other room mates still being in the HS mindset of not telling on anyone.</li>
</ol>
<p>Giving her 24 hours to resolve a situation plays right into her hands. It allows her to claim she was threatened (which she will claim no matter what they say). It gives her warning that they are going to the authorities and thus allowing her to hide evidence that the BF is living there.</p>
<p>Any attempt to resolve a conflict amicably assumes that all parties are reasonable. In this case the room mate is not reasonable.</p>
<p>IMO The boyfriend should just not be there - non negotiable. The suit mates are paying good money for personal space, such as it is, along with the peace of mind of having a secure building and environment. Random people should not be milling around the dorm on a regular basis and certainly not alone in the suite. I see no gray here at all. As he seems to be moved in I think it is an issue to escalate according to the housing policies on guests - maybe with a notification to suit mate first, but sometimes waves need to be created. People seem to let a lot of things go under the excuse that they didn’t want to create waves.</p>
<p>At this point I think it would be reasonable for mom and/or dad to jump in and say to D, “Let me show you how to handle this for next time.” Getting this solved now is too important to have it be the test case for the D. Let her parents model how to seek out the appropriate chanels and write a specific, to the point letter that doesn’t get lost in the weeds of emotion and opinion. Discover the policy, state the facts and get resolution.</p>
<p>OK, how 'bout another tack? Have the dd call Res Life and ask what is the policy on this, because, since move-in, one of the roommates has had her non-student bf living with this group of girls. Act innocent and pretend they don’t know the policy. This puts Res Life on notice of an issue before the roommate can do an end-round but can be seen as just asking for policy clarification rather than ratting the roomie out. Hopefully, Res Life will get right on it. This could also be done with the RA.</p>
<p>I tell you what, as a parent, I’d not only be upset if my D was one of the suitemates - but also, even if my child lived on a different suite on the same floor…or for that matter, in the same building! No excuse for an unemployed, homeless , stranger-of-a guy to be living in the midst of a bunch of students. No excuse at all. I’d use YDS’s tactics - but as a parent, calling innocently to ask, “Hey, my daughter said xxxx - I’m confused - really? This is allowed?”</p>
) </p>