<p>Stever, it’s YOUR house. When you sign a contract for a dorm room or enter into any situation with a roommate, the visitiation privileges extend to whoever that person wants that are not specifically excluded. Your roommate has a SO who is a rough, nasty former felon who has a rep that makes your hair stand up? Try to get rid of him. If he’s only there in accordance to visitation rules, that’s fine. Say, that mom had that child and he came to vist once during the year for a weekend. Doubt anyone would say anyting. Or how about once each semester. Doubt that would have been a problem either. The line gets drawn where the rules stipulate 6 nights a month. They apply to a 4 year old and to a SO or friends from town.</p>
<p>This trouble happens a lot, not just at NYU but at alot of colleges only the subject of the problem is an unwanted SO a lot of times. My friend went through this with her daughter whose roommate had a SO who was erratic and probably dangerous. My son had a problem with a roommate who liked to go out bar hopping and bring back strangers and would sexile him. Alll permissable under dormitory rules as long as it’s only so many nights a month.</p>
<p>And you can tell roommate to go to gross boyfriend’ place, all you want. As long as it doesn’t violate the contract, roommate can have the visitor.</p>
<p>I really disagree with you JHS. I love kids; I genuinely do. However, if I had a roommate who asked me to have a 4 year old stay in the same room for me for 6 consecutive days and nights, I’d say no too. And refusing to sign the requested permission is bound to cause unpleasant friction among the roommates.</p>
<p>cptofthehouse–and the dorm is HER house, she is paying rent. She should NOT have to dorm with a 4 year old, period. A 4 year old visiting once or twice during the year is cute, this is not the case. On top of which, a college dorm is NOT a place for a 4 year old to live for HIS good too.</p>
<p>Maybe place a clause in the housing contract for penalties if the overnight guest privileges are abused to the point the guest becomes an “unofficial roommate”.* </p>
<p>Knew of several college classmates who were sanctioned by the college for having such situations when it got to the point room/dormmates complained and/or the RA noticed. </p>
<ul>
<li>Way it was written at my college, there was a strong incentive to put a stop to it by the non-host roommates if they weren’t pleased with it as if the RAs found out and disclosed to the housing office, all roommates would end up getting sanctioned for violating visitation privileges.</li>
</ul>
<p>No, the dorm is NOT HER house. She is there under agreement, one that permits her and her dormmates certain privileges and she has no recourse if she doesn’t like them. Now if the mom of the kid wants the extra overnight privileges, then yes,that can be denied, since that is something that is outside what is permissalbe. Where does one draw the line on who is an undesirable guest? Can her roommate bring in a 17 year old guest, a 50 year. If NYU wants to draw differnt lines than what 's in the current contract, that’s a whole other story, but right now it seems to me that you can bring pretty much whomever you please as a guest as long as they do not violate the guest rules. At YOUR house, YOU make the rules not some lease, so your kids cannot bring any guest into house if you simply do not want him/her there. It’s not the same at all.</p>
<p>I think it’s safe to say that few undergraduates anticipate that they will have to share a dorm room with a toddler. It’s such an anomaly that it made the news.<br>
Both of my kids had questionnaires that asked all kinds things to determine compatibility. NYU is a pricey school that I would expect has similar procedures for matching roommates. If they are going to allow minors, and specifically young minor children of students to be a part of the equation, a potential roommate should be given a chance to weigh in. Obviously, NYU didn’t think it through, and they provided a single to correct the situation.Seems like a reasonable outcome to what was probably just an oversight.</p>
<p>I don’t really disagree with all of you, of course, but I do think it’s worth questioning why everyone reacts that way. One of the things I remember clearly about college was thinking how weird it was to be living suddenly in a world where everyone was 18-22. A couple of faculty families with young kids lived in our residential college at various times, and the kids were EXTREMELY popular with the students (although not necessarily at night in their rooms). I took a job babysitting for a faculty infant on a regular basis, in large part because I missed seeing little children as part of everyday life.</p>
<p>People have boyfriends, people have siblings, people have weird parents, people have children. People have mental illnesses, too. Part of the roommate experience is figuring out how to deal with other people’s baggage, and they with yours, without coming to blows. I wish one of my roommates had a young child visiting occasionally rather than a serious drug addiction that never went away, or in another case schizophrenia, but I wasn’t so lucky. Obviously, a child is not the usual baggage for an NYU student, but I would guess that the poor, put-upon roommate could have expanded her vicarious experience a whole bunch by embracing her one-semester experience and getting to know the mother and child, rather than whining about it.</p>
<p>The situation is unusual which is why it made the news. Most parents of a small child do not have the luxury of going to a full board college, and if they do, they tend to live off campus, and this sort of thing is avoided. But with the locaton of NYU and cost of housing NYC, I could see this situation occurred. Apparently the mother of the child wanted a single too. Don’t know if it was an oversight on NYU’s part not to take this situation into consideration in giving her a shared room, don’t know if it is a shared room or apartment that is at issue, and don’t know if the mother just didn’t tell NYU the sitaution, and asked for that category of room due to cost issues. A single studio is going to cost more than a shared suite or apartment there. </p>
<p>But though I agree with the young woman who was not happy, that having a child there for the maximum visitation allowed creates a crimp in everyone else’s life in the apartment, unless there is some stipulation that can be cited in the dorm contract, the mother was within her rights. As I said before, I can think of some charactors I’d much less have as my roommate’s guest than a little boy.</p>
Based on what little I know about the NYU ‘campus’ I doubt that it could be mistaken for a traditional residential college. And I quite agree that it can be good to interact with people in different stages of life while in college. That doesn’t change my reaction, which is that this living arrangement is not appropriate for the mother of a young child. I am much relieved to hear that she had at least requested a single room, where presumably there would be no limit on the number of nights the son could be present.</p>
<p>Is the mom paying extra to have the toddler there? Where is the toddler eating? How is the mom paying for that? It’s not just about the room. It’s great that this mom is going to college, she just should have made better arrangements.</p>
<p>Ok so even taking out how incredibly unfair this is to the roommate, even if it is technically to the letter of the rules, can we talk about incredibly unfair it is TO THE KID? A dorm is absolutely no place for a child on any kind of consistent basis. </p>
<p>I love kids. I was a live-in nanny for several summers for 5 children (well, it started with 3 and then it kept growing). BUT when I’m at school, the last thing I want is a kid running around. For me personally, I would constantly be worried about him/her.</p>
<p>It’s worse when if it were an off campus situation and the young woman did not mention she had a child who was going to be a regular visitor and started coming around more often than the apartment mate likes. At lease there was a limit spelled out.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if this was a shared room situation. When I went to college, you could decline to permit an overnight guest of your roommate’s. There had to be permission for such situations, though it was never an issue while I was in my dorm. Most everyone was very accommodating about being sexiled though there were some complaints about some taking advantage of the situation. </p>
<p>This is truly a rare situation, but the ugly, nasty, scary SO is not. May your students never have that in their lives, or worse yet, be the one with that SO.</p>
<p>SteveMA, the child is just there as a guest under the guest rules which limit overnight guests to 6 nights a month. Not as a regular live in there. The young woman did not want her apartment mate having a young child as a guest. That is the bare bones of it. The guest limitations are usually strictly enforced at NYU so to prevent students from taking in the “hobo” roommate because being in NYC, that could be a very common scene. My son has itinerant long term guests quite often at his place as people come into the city and need a place to live between apartments. That is quite common. But none of them are children, nor have any of them been objectionable to others in the apartment from what I gather. But he and his apt mates have a private apartment with a standard lease. I don’t know what would happen if one of the residents brought a child into the picture. Once in long while, charming and cute. Once a month, proably fine. Twice, umm. Three times or four times might start to get tiresome. SIx times might be a breaking point. But I don’t know what the legal ramifications are in their lease as each apartment mate has signed the document and are held to the provisions of it.</p>
<p>From other reports of this, it was a shared room in a suite situation. A big reason why this is NOT ok and a serious imposition along with the fact a dorm for traditionally aged college students is no place for a 4 year old child unless it’s for very occasional day visits.</p>
<p>Moreover, depending on the rules of a given apartment or co-op/condo, there is recourse for a loud/inconsiderate roommate or neighbor. </p>
<p>A few professionals who decided to hold a few parties for their show biz friends in a neighboring co-op ended up getting booted out for violating their co-op’s noise rules several years back…especially after the NYPD had to be called in to break up the party at 3 am and move some vehicles which were blocking the narrow street.</p>
<p>I think colleges have to step back from “you guys work it out” to follow the letter of the rules UNLESS all parties agree. Which means a roommate has to agree to any overnnite visitors.</p>
<p>Children were definitely allowed in my dorm in college, or at least no one told us otherwise. People had their younger siblings up for the weekend, I brought the kids I babysat around to meet people and visit, and twice when a colleague of mine from work needed a break I kept her infant in the room overnight. </p>
<p>I think that the woman complaining has some legitimate issues, but I also think she’s way overblowing this. First of all, NYU classes started 1/7/2013. She had emailed, Huff post, in enough time for them to research and write the article by 1/18/2013. So, 10 days max. There’s a lot of speculation in her article, for example, she wrote </p>
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</p>
<p>She also says</p>
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</p>
<p>which implies that the child hasn’t actually been there every day. </p>
<p>There’s also very much an underlying belief on the part of the nonmomroommate that it’s all about her. She says:</p>
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</p>
<p>and later </p>
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<p>Finally there’s this line, which makes my skin crawl a little:</p>
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<p>Having said all that, it doesn’t seem like this is the right person for this roommate. If someone doesn’t enjoy the presence of children it seems like they’re the wrong roommate to put here, and momroommate deserves someone who isn’t going to be judgemental. The correct thing for her to do would have been to raise concerns with the roommate, and if an agreement couldn’t be reached (e.g. an agreed calendar of a number of days of visiting, promising to keep the room “childfree” at certain hours, momroommate pays for childproofing materials), approach the University for mediation, or reassignment giving them a reasonable time period to work within. This isn’t a crisis, it’s a mismatch, and rushing the media is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Curious, we don’t know if the writer spoke to the RA and what the response was.</p>
<p>Its doesn’t make my skin crawl for a college kid to complain that her experience is going to be limited if a kid is running around all the time. It will. She (or her parents) are paying for a dorm, not living at home with little kids. I am likely more conservative that most, but it is the responsibility of mother and father of this kid to take care of him.</p>