The point is that the roommate shouldn’t be allowed to ‘sextile’ another roommate. Each student has the right to be in the room 100% of the time, and 100% of that time should be without a porn movie being filmed in the next bed.
My freshman roommate slept ALL the time. She was in bed when I went to class, she was in bed at 8 at night. That’s what she was paying for, a place to sleep, so she slept. I studied in the common room, I was quiet as I could be. I didn’t feel this was unreasonable and I didn’t bring people into the room to chat while she was sleeping.
One of my friend’s D’s went to an Ivy. The first night, as he moved her in, they walked in and found the roommate in bed with a guy. To ease the awkwardness, my friend asked the girl to introduce her bf and she said something to the effect of, Hell if I know his name, I got him off Craigslist! My friend went straight to the RA and had his D moved to a new room immediately!
My own D had some issues with her roommate but mostly because she’d bring friends in who would go through D’s stuff when she wasn’t there and do stupid things like put her hair brush in the fridge. After asking her roommate not to have these friends in when d wasn’t there (and knowing that they wouldn’t come in when she was there!), D went to the RA. The roommate was told to socialize with her friends in THEIR rooms, not hers. D and the girl made it through the year. The girl moved off campus second year and D became an RA.
I’ve been following the other thread (and now this) for a few days. I can get that college students are going to have adult relationships. I think this is perfectly OK as long as no one is inconvenienced in any way (and not agreeing with someone’s personal behavior is not an inconvenience in itself). What I cannot wrap my mind around is the fact that somehow students think it’s OK to have sex with another person while the roommate is in the room! How is this considered acceptable behavior? I’m sorry, but I’m not paying thousands of dollars for my kid to have to witness other people having sex. That’s pushing things way too far IMO.
I doubt an RA will do anything. She needs to be toxic enough to the couple that they choose to stay at his place. Love and war. Maybe a water blaster on the copulating lovebirds and opening the room door?
Bf followed roomie from sunny CA, but since he had no place else to live, moved into the dorm room. RA hesitant to intervene as she feared escalating hostilities. Finally told my student that she got him out or I would go to the director of housing and demand room be split 3 ways as I certainly wasn’t in the mood to pay half. BTW, not freshmen, not a new random roommate.
I had the same situation in 1989. Guessing this is as old as co-ed dorms. If it makes her uncomfortable - she needs to be proactive and deal with it. Luckily in my case roommate’s BF was from across the hall - so I just went and slept in his bed.
Happens all the time. Hell, I did it with my sophomore year roommate. (No, we never had sex when my roommate or his roommate were in the room. That’s disgusting.)
My roommate didn’t have a problem with it because she was good friends with him too. We all lived in an apartment for the two years after.
That said, I asked permission first. That’s courtesy. S/he shouldn’t be sleeping in D’s room if she’s not OK with it. It is HER room first, and the partner’s sleeping quarters only if both people are OK with it.
Your D needs to try to work it out with her roommate first. If that doesn’t work, then it’s the RA’s job.
But also- your D’s roommate doesn’t have to be her friend. You can be friendly without being friends. My freshman year roommate and I were on good terms but never once hung out or anything. We were just completely different people. We were good roommates though.
ETA: FWIW, I was in a super liberal residential college where most everyone had pretty liberal ideas about sex. NO ONE had sex or did anything close with a roommate in the room. This is a completely foreign idea to me. We would all just text our roommates and ask if it was OK to have the room for an hour or whatever. Basically, we were all cool with it because a lot of times it was during the day when we were out of the room anyway.
I just do not understand the sex with roommate in there thing. Nope. Not even a little bit.
RAs are trained (supposed to be) to help roommates work through contracts. Some schools have “roommate contracts” where roommates are supposed to discuss these issues (one of the questions often is around having overnight guests of the same or opposite sex). The RA SHOULD be able to help with this. And an RA has a boss (usually a CA) who is more experienced and definitely should be able to help. Often the help involves sitting the two roommates down to talk with the RA as the mediator.
@Janwel, my daughter had a similar experience, except in my daughter’s case, daughter is the person who introduced the boyfriend to the roommate. The BF was a close friend of my daughter’s boyfriend who lived in the city where she was attending college (but attended a different U.) – and was invited to help with the move. (My D was alone, and bringing along an extra male to help with the lifting seemed to make sense at the time).
It was disappointing because my daughter never had the friendship she had hoped for with the roommate… but that’s life. They did socialize together, but the roommie and boyfriend were always in their own world. College is a place full of older teenagers with raging hormones, and a whole lot of time & energy is expended on relationships and hooking up – at least it was a monogomous relationship, and my D didn’t have to contend with a succession of different guys over the course of the year. D. roomed with different students her sophomore year.
As to the etiquette of overnight visitors, that’s pretty much something that just about all college students have to deal with. I certainly did in my day, living in a co-ed dorm. My daugher was at a women’s college in a women’s dorm, but the issues were the same.
One HS classmate friend who had a similar issue with a roommate asked me to make a cassette copy of a few random songs off Weird Al’s “Off The Deep End” album to blast on stereo whenever his roommate and partner decided to start having sex with him in the room.
Some choice songs which were somewhat appropriate:
“I was only kidding” (Mainly for the sounds of stampeding wildlife):
My heart goes out to your D. She really needs to say something and put a stop to it (getting an RA involved would be a great idea) or it will continue with the potential for an unhappy ending. At least that’s my experience.
I spent the first day with my roommate my freshman year listening to her wax poetic about the boyfriend she left at home halfway across the country and how they were meant to be. There was even a shrine in our room of pictures and memorabelia of the two of them together. About two days later I walked in on her and some random guy. I was too shocked to say anything. I just walked out. She introduced me to him as soon as the opportunity arose and well, I never got to know the guy because one day I walked in and found her in bed with another guy. At least I knew this one. And I would wake up to find him in our room. It stressed me out and I handled it the way many here have suggested - I became passive aggressive. My #1 tactic was just to stay in the room all the time. Can’t walk in on your roommate and some guy if you never leave the room to begin with! She got the hint and spent many nights (and days) in someone else’s room.
I can’t say I “won” though. As is usually the case, passive-aggressive battles aren’t one-sided. I would find my glue dried up. Or my stapler missing. Little things. But I got the message. (In hindsight, I’m thinking I probably shoud have locked up my toothbrush!)
Fast forward to senior year. We managed to be friends (but weren’t roommates and she had a different BFF) and I was living in a house where the front door locked automatically, but my roommate and I never locked the door to the bedroom. Freshman year roommate’s BFF had sex in my bed. And bragged about it. She knew it would bother me. She also had sex in the bed of one of my best friends whom she knew would be pissed about it as well. (BFF and I didn’t get along. Part of the reason was that I thought her moral compass was waaay off. And that was before this incident.) I can’t help but think that my ex-roommate was in on it. Like some type of sick revenge.
But that’s not the end of it.
Fast forward to my 40th birthday where my husband decides he wants to surprise me with cards from people from throughout my life. He contacts former roommate (Thanks to Facebook) and asks her to send a card. She just happens to be visiting with BFF at the time and they both write in a card - as if they’re mean girls in junior high. It wasn’t even a birthday card they’d picked out, but a “Get well soon” card. I’d like to say I’m a bigger person and just laughed it off, but honestly, it hurt. Here were these 40yo women who couldn’t follow the advice that if you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say it at all. I hadn’t been in touch in forever with ex-roommate either. (Karma had caught up to her in the form of a cheating husband who left her while she was pregnant and I think bitterness was a bit of a motivator for that card.)
So (TL/DR): Moral of the story is to have your D confront it now. Set rules. Be honest. Get the RA involved if you have to. Don’t go passive-aggressive as it may come back to haunt you decades after graduation.
I guess this is one of the only positives of my D being placed in a triple that turned quad due to over enrollment. I can’t imagine in that situation that any guys will be spending the night. Not to mention the that “priest in residence” is only two doors down. I had to laugh when we learned that this summer from a maintenance guy when we were checking out where her room was earlier this summer.
I went to a Catholic university myself, but our dorm was coed by floor, making it fairly easy for guys to spend the night since there was no way to prevent guys from entering the dorm in the evening b/c many lived there. My roommate found a boyfriend fairly early on, and he did spend the night often. I didn’t care about him spending the night as we were all friends, but they certainly weren’t having sex when I was in the room. I did give them privacy though and occasionally would spend the night with other friends in my dorm. If this were my D, I would absolutely have my D address this with the roommate to try and come up with a reasonable compromise and if that failed to work, I’d have her go to her RA.
While you would think that most people would not have sex when someone else is in the room, it happens. Especially if alcohol is involved. I remember years ago, my family was down at the beach. I was probably a senior in college and my younger sister a freshman or soon to be entering college. My sister needed to get home earlier than the rest of my family, so she ended up spending the night with one of my best friends at her shared beach rental as my BF was headed home early in the morning and willing to take my sister with her. In those type of shared beach rentals, people tend to sleep everywhere, share rooms, etc. Whatever room my sister was in was the same room BF was planning to sleep in, and she knew my sister was sleeping there with her. After a night of drinking (not my sister, she didn’t drink), BF and her boyfriend came back and had sex, I guess too drunk to realize that my completely sober sister was there or they assumed she’d sleep through it. My sister was horrified - she was fairly naive and not sexually active herself and suffered through the whole thing as she was too mortified to get up and leave the room.
Definitely read the other thread posted. I actually think you might just want to send this to your D to read. She might take courage from it. No one should have to put up with listening to a couple having sex.
Did they make a roommate contract? If so, she needs to embolden herself and ask that they do it, and ask for the RA to be present.
I do not recommend the passive aggressive Weird Al route. That’s childish. Have a conversation. Generally speaking roommates can agree on some time when they can each have the room to themselves. With any luck they can work out an agreement that works for both of them, if not, it’s the RA’s job to help.
I agree. First talk is with roommate and your D must clearly spell out what is not acceptable. If that doesn’t work, second talk is with RA who can hopefully both mediate a solution and follow-up. If RA is ineffective then I’d tell your D to continue to move up the chain (sometimes there is a Resident Director for a building, or else she should go to ResLife). Let her know that if necessary you are willing to speak with ResLife (yes, we all like our kids to be independent but sometimes colleges need a push from the bill paying parent).
The situation is unacceptable as it stands. Sorry she has to deal with it to start college.
I would definitely tell her that she has the right to not have a 3rd person in the room so often and it is better that the “starts as she means to go on”…that is, figure out what she is cool with and have a talk NOW.
You’re assuming my HS friend didn’t have a conversation. The Weird Al thing was only implemented after his roomie was not only unwilling to have a serious discussion, but acted like a flaming jerk for him attempting to have one.
And in my mind, my friend’s use of Weird Al wasn’t passive-aggressive…it was 100% forthright retaliation against the jerky roommate who refused to discuss the issue…much less compromise.
Not to mention…if someone’s willing to have sex without considering how the roommate feels while s/he’s IN THE ROOM, that individual has some serious issues with basic common courtesy and thus, the initial aggressor in the dispute.
At my daughter’s school, the official housing department policy is that each roommate has complete veto power over any guest, which strikes me as perfectly reasonable. I don’t agree that one paying resident should ever have to agree to give the other resident sole possession of the premises so that the room can be used to entertain a boyfriend. If the residents want to agree on something like that, sure, but neither has a right to have sex (or even to have a guest, for that matter) in a shared room or apartment. Especially in a shared room, that’s completely unacceptable. There’s a reason it is illegal to engage in sexual relations in public, and a shared dorm room is pretty public. Reasonable minds could vary on a private room in a multi-room suite, but I don’t think that is what we’re talking about it.
Lots of people here seem to want to enlist the OP’s daughter in a culture war, not resolve her problem. Yes, of course she has a right to feel comfortable in her room, and to be able to sleep there at night. No, she shouldn’t have to put up with what’s happening now. But while I’m sure it’s technically accurate to say that she should “never” be sexiled, or that she has the right to veto any guest in the room, those are rights that her peer group may not really acknowledge. And, yes, the roommate and the boy are likely to break up, but the two women may have to live together all year regardless. What’s more, they may even enjoy knowing one another once they get over this issue. I would leave it to the student herself to decide how absolutist and inflexible she wants to be, but I would advise her to be neither.
Remember, there’s another young woman in the story, someone who is having an intense experience that is temporarily interfering with her judgment. That doesn’t excuse her behavior, but it may explain it. Making her feel like her roommate is trying to control her sexuality is not likely to be a winning strategy.
Someone said this had been going on since the introduction of co-ed dorms. What do co-ed dorms have to do with it? I’m old enough to remember single-sex dorms as well as single-sex colleges, and as far as I remember the women had the same range of behaviors as today. (Except, yeah, having sex with a non-participating roommate present seems super-creepy. Back in the day, the roommate would have been expected to absent herself, but after too much of that there would be a discussion, etc.)
My son’s roommate moved out second semester to become an RA so he got a new roommate. This kid has in girlfriend sleeping over all week because it’s closer to her morning classes yet she lives in a single elsewhere on campus. So finally he tells roommate no more sleepovers and thankfully they end. It is too much a free-for-all in public school dorms IMHO.