<p>Definitely stay out of it. I can’t imagine any sort of room mate problem during the college years I would involve myself with, unless my own kid was facing some sort of disciplinary action and needed some kind of legal help. Barring that, she should handle this without mom or dad’s interference. She agrees. Let her do it.</p>
<p>Adding to the chorus of “stay out of it” people. Kid says she’s handling it, BELIEVE her. I am with moonchild-I can’t imagine involving myself in this. When on earth do we let our kids grow up??</p>
<p>And I’ll agree with Cobrat-Seattle is a very expensive place to live and I know plenty of young people just starting out who did and do live with roommates they’ve never met prior to moving in. My S met his best friend that way when he got his first place out of the military. They have been friends for many years and are in similar jobs so they sometimes hire each other for side jobs. </p>
<p>Learning to deal with people you don’t know and may not even like (whether you live with them or not) is a skill all adults need. It seems like both of these kids aren’t quite there yet.</p>
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I deal with people I don’t like all the time, but I don’t ever need to deal with them in the privacy of my own home. I wouldn’t expect my kids to have to be in the position to have to live with people they don’t like either, and that would include their husbands.</p>
<p>As hard as it is-S going through his own RM issues, I would stay out of it too. Less that 2 weeks ago, I sort of stepped in. Spoke to the hall director to see what the process was for a room change and if she thought that was possible. BUT, I also told her that if she needed specifics, she needed to talk to my S in his words and that I want him to start with the RA to give her a chance to do her job.</p>
<p>He did decided to stay in his room, but we just got done talking about if things do not change in a week, he needs to revisit the room change possibility again.</p>
<p>All I want for my S is for him to live in a room where people respect each other and their things, are cordial to each other and are good roommates to each other. Yes - this is extremely hard living with strangers. He is living in a almost toxic environment right now and something needs to change. I do not want it to affect him academically.</p>
<p>I feel bad that your D had to move once already by choice and now may be faced with an unexpected move. Sounds to me that the RM is playing all of her cards and was just looking for a chance to make her want to move or have to move. Maybe there is a better fit for your D and that will become evident if she moves again and has a chance to be happy.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Not much you can do even if you wanted to get involved since all you can do is stir up a hornets nest and then leave your DD to deal with it. Of course, your D is the one the RA would move since the roommate was there first. I;m just sorry that this happened, and would focus on trying to have your DD keep a good face on it and continue through the school year successully. Usually singles are available for upperclassmen and/or there are choices for who one rooms with, hopefully next year will be better. Try not to focus on the matter or keep bringing it up to DD. It has to be a painful thing to her.</p>
<p>Let her know you’re available if she needs advice but you have confidence in her ability to handle it.</p>
<p>Do you know why the roommate is not comfortable with your daughter? Is it specifically because of the incident with rowdiness and the bookcase?</p>
<p>If the RA and “authorities” are moving your daughter, it sounds like something serious has been going on or went on that night. Any chance your daughter has something going on that you don’t know about, such as substance abuse? Depression?</p>
<p>Generally, college authorities urge roommates to resolve things, and asking one to move without consent is unusual, at least in our experience. It is certainly more common for one roommate to ask to move, voluntarily, rather than one roommate being told to move, involuntarily.</p>
<p>I would only get involved to the extent of asking your daughter if she needs help and suggesting counseling, if that is the case.</p>
<p>I have to agree, stay out of it. A big part of going off to college is learning how to deal with roommates/dormmates. It’s great prep for real life. I also have to agree that if the roommate brought in “other authorities” that there is a lot more to this story then your DD is telling you and perhaps it’s not the room mate that is the issue.</p>
<p>I would advise her, but not get directly involved. From the outside, it looks like her roommate wants her out so she can have a room to herself and her boyfriend. If that is the case, there are ways to turn this around to keep that from happening - mainly not simply moving out, but swapping rooms with someone so she still has a roommate.</p>
<p>Does she know who the old roommate was, and why she moved out? If the facts are as D has presented them, then there may be something more going on that she doesn’t know about (or there is something she does know about but isn’t sharing with you). If her guests were inconsiderate, but not in violation of any policies, she should not be forced to move. If she is being told she needs to move, it sounds like the roommate may have said more than that she is uncomfortable - maybe that she feels unsafe. I would advise D to talk to the RA and ask point blank what was said. She shouldn’t couch it so much in terms of what the roommate did wrong, but what she, as someone who has had issues with 2 roommates now, can do to avoid these kinds of problems. If roommate said she feels unsafe, what specific actions on the part of your D make her feel unsafe (not because roommate is unreasonable, but because it might be something that makes others feel unsafe as well, and could be changed).</p>
<p>Good luck to your D. Without the full story, it sounds like the roommate has been waiting for a reason to kick her out, but she needs more information.</p>
<p>If it is all as OP’s D stated then it does seem like the roommate is trying to get her out because the roommate wanted the room to herself. </p>
<p>I would call up the housing director to let him/her know how disappointed I was of the latest move for my D, especially after such a bad experience of previous semester. I wish the school could have done a better job of doing their due diligence before they assigned a new roommate to my D. This whole roommate issue is stressing my D out and it is having a bad effect on her study. As the purpose of going to college is to focus on academic, this is not conducive to that and (this is not what I am paying for) . blah, blah, blah. I think it would be better for all parties involved if they could find a single for my D (for free).</p>
<p>You also have a perfect good reason to call housing to discuss cost of a single if that’s what you are willing to pay.</p>
<p>For all the talk that school won’t talk to parents and it wouldn’t do any good, I have called housing for both of my kids, got their rooms changed before they showed up at school. I have communicated with a dean, professors on D1’s behalf when she couldn’t get any where with them. D1 is out of college, she has a lot of responsibility at work and she rarely calls me for any help because she knows how I would handle those difficult situations.</p>
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<p>Not always, Steve. A lot of this generation knows that a good offense is the best defense. I also do not agree that LIVING with someone you don’t get a long with is good practice for life. If my husband was unlivewithable? I would not still be here. </p>
<p>My daughters learned how to fight with each other. They don’t need someone they don’t know, who does not have their back, to learn a “new” lesson. At all.</p>
<p>That said, unless your daughter asks for your help, or you find out something about a single and that sounds good to her, I’d let her handle it.</p>
<p>Oldforte, I love your post #23. Am still working on that one.</p>
<p>I have a lot of practice at work.</p>
<p>Part of the subtext is “I’ve been putting up for a while with your cr*p–BF always over–without complaining and I do one thing wrong and you’re ready to throw me out…that angers me!” Yes, the current issue is the damage to the room by rowdy friends, but unless all the issues get resolved, I don’t see these roommates co-existing peacefully in the future.</p>
<p>I find it disconcerting that your D couldn’t stop her friends from trashing the roommate’s side of the room.</p>
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<p>Part of that might have been the increasing trend of college admins bending to hovering/helicopterish parents in the '00s. </p>
<p>Veteran Profs/college admins who worked on campuses for 2+ decades have all noted a great increase in the frequency of parents getting involved in areas that were once strictly between student and Prof/admin such as grade disputes or housing issues. </p>
<p>While such parents existed in the mid-late '90s and earlier, they were far fewer and school authorities were less likely to bend to them…especially if it was a school with large secure endowments. </p>
<p>If a parent called a Prof, dean, or housing office at my LAC or several of my friends’ colleges back when I was an undergrad in the '90s, they’d usually be told that it’s a matter between the student and the college unless said student gives permission for parental involvement. </p>
<p>However, most students wouldn’t do so back then as that would cause them to be perceived as “immature” and “too dependent on parents” in the eyes of their classmates and even some Profs/admins back then. Consequently, most of us then undergrads made the best of it and deal with such matters without involving our parents.</p>
<p>cobrat - with all due respect, how would you know? When you were a student at Oberlin, did your parents call and got turn away? Did you work in one of those offices? My parents never called because they were immigrants, so I wouldn’t know if parents from my college called. Most of us on CC just give our personal experience as a data point, you just seem to have so much knowledge without really any first hand experience.
If parents called, I doubt it if students would necessary discuss it because more often than it would be personal matter. For a lot of people, they don’t care what other people think of them. This constant mention of “in the eyes” of…kind of gets old.</p>
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<p>While Oberlin was relatively big for an LAC, it was still small enough so that word got around if a student or his/her parents pulled something like that due to the negative perceptions of parental hovering. There was also the prevailing tendency among most students on campus to reflexively view such conduct as another example of socio-economically privileged parents trying to throw their weight around at the expense of institutional fairness to all students on the campus. Basically, few students at my LAC or many other colleges with similar campus cultures wanted to be “THAT guy/girl”. </p>
<p>As for whether my parents did, no way. They, like most parents of those of my generation expected us to be responsible and independent enough to handle such matters ourselves. We may ask them for advice, if needed, but we had to be the ones to do the legwork.</p>
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No cobrat. I went to a small LAC, 2400 students. We gossiped about who slept with whom and who passed out at a fraternity, but we didn’t talk about our parents. No one would know and no one would have cared. If a parent called the administration, they wouldn’t share that information with other students. So just stop with this nonsense.</p>
<p>While we have not had a reason to do it (so far), I don’t see a problem with calling the administration.</p>
<p>In OP’s case, i would call the RA if my kiddo was OK with it</p>
<p>It would be a huge violation of privacy rights for faculty or administration to share phone calls made to them with anyone but the caller or someone where permission was given to share the information. This was even true in the dark ages when I went to college. Administration, even at the smallest schools, would NOT have shared phone calls with others.</p>