One of my older children moved back to the US a few weeks ago to attend a state flagship in the Northeast. He turned 18 a few weeks ago and started this January. Excited about college, he tried to contact the new roommates in the suite dorm. It was obvious they had lived there since August or longer.
For weeks individually via text and email he tried to touch base with no response. He moved in while they were away. I assumed they were busy with the holidays and finals and all was good and tried to be reassuring. I assumed they would be different after the break.
Fast forward he moves into the dorm apartment and it is a mess. He sent me video and I was surprised at how it looked; especially since my kiddo is very neat. I explained he could help them to tidy up and this was minor as roommates must compromise. He has his own room so all is good and he can keep his room clean. If he invites people over, he can move all the items to a pile if needed.
Oddly, It has been two weeks and he has tried multiple times a day to speak with each of the three. He only knows one of their names which I find odd. Every time he tries to stop them to have chit chat, they are too busy and racing to online game in their rooms.He literally relayed yesterday one said they are too busy to talk because they are heading to their video game and the other two wiz by and will not speak to him. He feels totally unwelcome!
My first thought was they must game with each other. My son is not a gamer and more into outdoor sports but willingly to meet new people. Son relayed that they do not communicate with each other either and are all antisocial. He knows they are gaming because he can hear them yelling at the games in their rooms at all hours of the night.
He has not be offered room in the kitchen, room in the pantry or refrigerator. Their items are piled up in the living room from one end to the other including the dinning table. He just feels like this was not what he signed up for when he committed to the apartment.
My son is extremely social and now is just very sad and deflated. I explained that they do not need to be friends, just civil. I suggested he post a time for them to have a roommate meeting but he is not hopeful. I am not sure how further to provide reassurance in this situation as he is ready to throw in the towel. I suggested he speak to housing about other openings but feel it could be much worse. I relayed that there is a whole community of social people outside the front door and he just needs to make a life for himself outside the apartment.
He really was anticipating coming home and hanging out with his roommates and it looks like that will not be happending.
My question is, is this just typical today at college?
I don’t think this sounds typical, but it is still very early here (I am just waking up, still pitch black outside), so you will probably hear more as day goes on.
You have given it 25 minutes when most of the US is not yet out of bed. It isn’t typical, but I can see how it could happen. You use the term apartment, but on re-reading I see it is a suite dorm. There should be an RA on his hall, and he should seek that person out and talk with him. He should label his own food clearly in the pantry & fridge. He should join some clubs and groups on campus to make friends. He probably could just state to the other guys that he is going to clear some space in the dining room table, and move their items to the floor. But honestly, he isn’t going to get a bunch of freshman guys who have already lived there for several months to clean up their suite because he is tidy and they are not. And if they don’t seem friendly, he should seek friends elsewhere.
By the way, this is not just a US phenomenon. One of my kids, who is very friendly and outgoing and spoke the language pretty well, was frozen out socially during a semester at a European university by students from the home country. She ended up making several friends among the other exchange students from all over the world, but none from the host country. It was upsetting because she had studied the language for years and was excited to make friends there. She got through it, though. Your son will, too. He needs to adjust his expectations and start looking for friends outside his suite.
It is unfortunate he was put in a suite with just gamers, but they probably decided to room together because of their common interest. I only have girls. It has been hit or miss for them when it came to roommates. My younger daughter is living with 2 girls who are very entitled and messy. D2 is almost like a housekeeper/mother for them. She asks them to take the garbage or clean up the apartment. She talked them into hiring a cleaning person to clean the apartment every week. By choice, D2 does not hang out with her roommates, but she has a lot of other friends, so it’s not as big of an issue for her. I would encourage your son to join few clubs or get a job on campus in order to make some friends. I am sure there are many outdoorsy people on campus.
@intparent thank you and yes, I realized the time now…
So this is something an RA deals with? Ok, I will suggest he involve the RA but yes, he needs to lower his expectations.
Multiple members of our family attended this school but we all lived in an apartment in the dinosaur days or at home.
Sounds like you and I I have the same thoughts on this and making a life outside the dorm.
I know that the roommate he spoke with is a Junior so that may be the issue. These guys may be older but he has no way of knowing since they will not communicate.
I suggested he knock on each door, let them know he is moving the stuff and move it. He just did not want to touch their things.
I actually think it is a blessing they are not partying it up or bringing dates back. To me having a quiet place for the most part is a blessing but what do I know
@oldfort thank you and I agree…ARGH it is hard to hear your child unhappy and you are a continent and ocean away! I keep relaying you just need to be civil, not friends. Anyone can make it one semester.
My son is a gamer and would never treat someone this way. Sounds like he got stuck with a particularly anti-social group . . . maybe part of the problem is that he started mid-year. Perhaps there is a reason they had a spot open up in that suite. Glad he is staying positive.
Thank you @SouthFloridaMom9 and all the parent input here. Starting mid year seemed like a good idea at the time, because of his age but now I see the downside. As I said previously, these roommates for the most part are very quiet. For my kiddo who has never been a gamer and does not watch TV, this is going to be a cultural experience.
Hopefully speaking with his RA will give your son some practical advice on how to proceed. Do not expect the other roommates to make any changes, though. Sounds like they are set in their ways.
I would encourage your son’s goals to be more basic…making room for his food in the kitchen, being able to fix his food and have a clear spot to eat at the dining table, practical things for daily living.
Is the bathroom an issue? Having a clean bathtub/shower is a health issue, so have him buy flip flops to wear in the shower for protection if the bathrooms are not community style and cleaned daily by campus staff.
This is not normal, and it is unfortunate that your son has stepped into this chaos. Does he feel the need to switch rooms right now? Have him find out the rules for switching. Also, he needs to be reaching out to other students and trying to find suitable roommates for next year. Have him visit potential roommates and check out their dorms/apts before committing.
@powercropper he has two friends at the school from high school that started in August. I believe the plan is to move in with each other in the Fall… They have a roommate who may want to switch. I cautioned them to tread lightly as you do not want someone to feel like they are being moved out so he can move in. I do not think the school allows switching until the end of the semester. He moved into the only vacant room in his building so housing is very competitive. Yes, he wants to switch but the parent in me says again, “It could be a heck of a lot worse!”
It is not a typical situation, but it could be a lot worse. Sounds like the guys are not very social, (or socially skilled),not even with eachother. As others have said, they probably chose to room together for this very reason. Since they spend a great deal of time in their rooms, your son can easily invite other friends to socialize in the suite. Also, it’s probably best for your son to initiate staking out his own space in the fridge, pantry, etc, because roommates are probably unaware that some discussion of that would be appropriate. This sounds like a “live and let live” situation, not ideal for developing friendships, but also not problematic to create stress and discomfort. Good luck.
First, it totally stinks that your kid got put in this situation, and I feel very bad for him.
A couple thoughts…
There's probably a reason there was a space available in that suite. The other guy probably said the heck with this situation and moved out.
When I didn't come back after my freshman year, my two suitemates were terrible to every person who tried to move into my spot-nobody lasted more than a week because they wanted the space to themselves. That could also be what's going on.
If it were my kid I’d try to get him moved, and if he can’t move, at least externalize the situation, start cleaning out and claiming shelves in the fridge and making it livable for himself, and to heck with the rest of the guys. There’s no upside to being nice or socializing with them, so do what he has to do to make it decent until he CAN get out.
@Periwinkle, I think everything u wrote, I messaged him yesterday. He does have their names but does not know who is who because they will not speak to him. #4 especially…who wants to stay in those rooms when there are places to go and people to meet. @MotherOfDragons, #2 may actually be a possibility. My guess is that these young men are just socially awkward.
Again appreciate the sounding board. My spouse thinks the situation is silly and he can just close the door to his room and deal with it. I told the kiddo it could be more of a challenge…they could be sharing a quad with two sets of bunk beds…at least he can close his door.
I moved into a three person suite my sophomore year. It never occurred to me that I would have two roommates who would barely speak to me. I was replacing a young woman who took a year off because of anorexia. The unfriendlier of the two roommates then had a nervous breakdown and also dropped out so we ended up with three people who barely knew each other and had different friendship groups. I can’t even remember the name of the woman who moved in in January. It was all very weird and uncomfortable. Luckily I had great roommates the next two years.
It’s always weird when someone comes into a room with older students on an unplanned basis. I was on both ends of this during my college years.
I spent the first semester of my junior year on an internship in New York, and when I came back I was placed into a suite with two sophomores I had never met, taking the place of their friends who had just been suspended for a year for disciplinary violations in a process many felt was unfair and excessive. So it was a little frosty in there, to say the least. Over time, I became friends with one of my new roommates, and we are still friends today. But the other roommate and I never clicked at all, even though the two of them were reasonably close. That one and I were civil to one another, but that was about it; you could probably fit everything we said to one another over the course of four months on a 30-minute dictation tape.
The next year, I was part of a group sharing a great four-bedroom suite available only to seniors. We were really close friends who had all been in the same entryway as freshmen. Two of us (not including me) had been roommates since the first day of college, and three of us (including me) had been roommates as sophomores. In between the housing lottery and the beginning of the next school year one of us had a series of schizophrenic breaks, was hospitalized three times, and was both seriously medicated and seriously weird, and another of us – this was the pair who had continuously roomed together – became quite depressed over dealing with his friend’s mental illness, and decided to stop out of college for a year, living nearby and working in a call center. The schizophrenic guy returned to college at the start of the year, so he was occupying one of the bedrooms, and a sophomore transfer student who was an athletic recruit from a big-time college basketball program (and also a devout Catholic) was placed in our other bedroom – the one everyone else had to walk through to get to their own rooms.
I can only imagine his early letters home: Dear Mom and Dad, I am living with a mentally ill person who keeps talking about the voices he is hearing and two other guys who are super-intense academically and probably think I’m dumb. They don’t care about sports; they listen to punk rock; they drink, and I think one does drugs; they talk about abortion rights and female priests. Get me out of here! He was very, very sweet. Over time, we came to appreciate him, but he was always to some extent an interloper, and it was never a close relationship.
That said, what the OP describes is off the charts for anti-social behavior. The RA can probably help improve things a notch or two. But these guys are pretty much violating universal social rules for welcoming strangers; it’s hard to believe they are engaged in unintentional snubbing. I wouldn’t expect a whole lot.
I get the impression they are all addicted to gaming and still function in school…One of my older kids dabbled in gaming but was definitely still social at school. He had an extremely weird roommate at the same school who never wanted to put on clothes, even when we visited…Walked around in his boxers. They shared a double. My older one was the one who convinced his youngest brother to get the suite room.
