<p>I guess for me it just seems weird because I grew up with my mom going on about how she remembers computers being as big as an entire room. So the concept of parents on facebook is just…strange. I’m sure someday my utilizing some modern technology will be weird for my own kids too though, when I have them.</p>
<p>And I do agree with the privacy thing. I think at 18 we should be able to be trusted to make judgements on the character of a person ourselves…and be mature to reserve that judgement until we actually meet the person, not based on an internet profile.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t see an issue with the mother looking at her son’s roommate’s Facebook profile. Anyone can look it up unless he’s put some privacy settings. It’d be an invasion of privacy to scout through his individual friends to view every comment he’s made on everyone else’s profile or to make a fake account to friend him and see more, but otherwise, it’s pretty much public domain. I just think it’s wrong to judge a person by their profile.</p>
<p>Of course, I have my mom friended on Facebook. I’m aware that she can see whatever I write and the profiles of any friends who don’t have privacy settings. Doesn’t bother me at all.</p>
<p>I mean, if the roommate had on his profile that he enjoys torturing and killing small animals in his spare time, I would probably worry…but it just feels to me like the OP is assuming “gay” to mean “can’t control hormones around other guys” by presuming the comparison of a guy and a girl rooming to a straight and a gay guy rooming. “Gay” doesn’t rub off on you, it is not contagious, and gay people are perfectly as capable as straight people of respecting boundaries.</p>
<p>“Three, I’ll say it again, looking up your child’s roommates…well, that’s just creepy and embarrassing for the student.”</p>
<p>I guess it matters what one’s perspective is. H and I have extensive backgrounds as journalists, and older S was a professional journalist even as a teen. When he went to college about 10 years ago, I Googled his roommate, and told S what I found.</p>
<p>S wasn’t freaked out. It was a pretty normal thing for people in our family to do. I had learned that his roommate came from a newspaper-owning family, and also was active in some kind of fundamentalist church. S was an atheist.</p>
<p>S wasn’t put off by what I found and wasn’t particularly interested either. He and his roommate didn’t bother contacting each other before school started. They ended up being good friends despite their religious differences.</p>
<p>Younger S checked out his original freshmen roommates on Facebook , and then showed me with concern the drunken partying pictures he had found of them. This was before I joined Facebook, something that S later showed me how to do.</p>
<p>After I joined Facebook 2 years ago, that S at first didn’t want to be FB friends with me. He finally did – because we already had so many FB friends (adults – including senior citizens-- and young people including high school students) in common that it seemed silly not to be FB friends.</p>
<p>Facebook has become like the town square or like what the world used to be like when people lived in small towns and everyone knew each other. It isn’t creepy to look up someone’s profile. It’s not as if one has to hack into the person’s computer to do so. It’s public info.</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t forty and fifty something adults be on facebook if they so chose? What, they don’t have friends and social networks just like hs or college-age students?</p>
<p>Hacking into your kid’s account without authorization to check out his or her friends is wrong. However, doing a simple search on facebook for Joe Schmoe and seeing what Joe Schmoe has available to the public isn’t stalking, IMO.</p>
<p>"I guess for me it just seems weird because I grew up with my mom going on about how she remembers computers being as big as an entire room. So the concept of parents on facebook is just…strange. "</p>
<p>I have friends in their 70s who are on FB. S is FB friends with his grandmom, who’s in her mid 70s.</p>
<p>I remember when my high school was one of the few in the country that had a computer, and it was as big as a room. Only boys were allowed to join the computer club.</p>
<p>That hasn’t prevented me from having more than 1,000 FB friends including my younger son.</p>
<p>Being a parent doesn’t stop when the kid turns 18. Personally, if I were to be looking up the kid’s potential roommates, it would be to see if they appeared to be the “party till you drop” types. A number of years ago a boy from a local family, straight-laced, non-partier, super grades, got a great scholarship and shipped off to MIT. Within weeks he was dead of an alcohol overdose courtesy of his new “friends”. His parents never saw that coming - no way, no how. </p>
<p>I disagree that having roommates that party is anywhere close to the same as having a roommate who is gay. I also disagree that it was all the fault of the “friends” that he od’d. My roommate freshman year and a few of the girls down the hall went out all the time to parties, and I chose for myself to not go out with them, as partying was not something I was interested in at all. You don’t have to hang out with the people you live with, outside of when you’re both in the room at the same time. My freshman year roommate was someone I got along with, but we didn’t hang out.</p>
I agree. I’ve looked at the FB pages of my son’s roommates-to-be–not because I expect to find something damning or worrisome, but simply because these are the people my son is going to be living with for the next nine months, and I’m naturally quite curious about them. I really don’t see what’s wrong or inappropriate about this, and calling it “stalking” is just plain silly.</p>
<p>I never said that it was. I said that’s something I would be looking for. Please indicate by quoting my post where I said that having roommates that party is the same as having a gay roommate.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I never said that either, but he certainly didn’t do it all by himself. The case cost MIT around $6 million, so the courts were not on your side.</p>
<p>A lot of experts in public safety will tell you that feeling unsafe is more than enough to establish the situation as unsafe and to remove yourself asap. I think the worst thing someone can do if they are feeling unsafe is to try and talk themselves out of it. If something feels off, get out. There is simply no downside to removing oneself from the situation. </p>
<p>As for roommates, to me it comes down to one issue. Never is a person more vulnerable than when they are asleep. It’s impossible to be on alert 24/7 and no one should have to live like that. Studies do not provide a good nights sleep. </p>
<p>Mythmom, Thank you for sharing that information about threatening language.</p>
<p>Donna, I was in my 30s and in the deep south the first time I heard the word jew used as an insult. A woman I did not know was bragging about getting a lower price from a seller, she said she had “jewed him down.” I automatically gasped and froze. My friend who I was visiting tried to smooth it over by saying, “Oh, PMK here is a Yankee, she’s not used to that kind of language.” Then the woman said, “It’s a compliment, really, it means Jews are good with money.” We left a few minutes later.</p>
I heard that expression a lot as a kid in New Jersey, but it was the part of NJ that’s really East Pennsylvania (and not East Philly, either, but east middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania). I think that kind of casual, ingrained anti-Semitism is more rural than it is Southern.</p>
<p>I can attest to the fact that this disgusting and offensive expression was not only used down south. It happened to me years ago, in one of the major northeast cities, and I can tell you that it was a shock, even back then. I had a client with whom I had a long standing, good relationship. I was supposed to collect a fee from him directly, pay in a main office, and bring him back a receipt. I could easily see that he’d given me the right amount since he had the bills fanned out. Didn’t count it out like a cashier or a bank teller would do. “No Jew in you” was his remark - I remember it as clearly today as it was yesterday.</p>
<p>My boss used that slur years ago when I hadn’t been working there very long. I was stunned into silence. The next day he came to me and apologized.</p>
<p>One of my southern SILs used that phrase when talking about going to yard sales and trying to bargain down the price. She KNOWS that I am Jewish. She got an evil glare and a “well, REALLY now!” (and I am normally a pretty mellow, friendly person, so for me to get snappy is most unusual).</p>
<p>In neither case could the phrase be taken as anything other than a slur.</p>
I think there are still plenty of people in this country who live in small towns, ethnic or religious enclaves, or relatively sheltered environments who may not personally know identifiably gay people. There are still plenty of people whose religions teach that homosexuality is wrong. As a result, it’s not surprising that these people would be uncertain about what it would mean for them (or for their kids) to have a gay roommate. I think there’s nothing wrong with asking the question, and I think there were a lot of good answers. Bottom line: don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>Unless you’re concerned that the roommate will play showtunes–or even worse, opera–at all hours.</p>