<p>Don't know if this counts, but my suburban Jewish d had a rural roommate who had never met a Jew. Worked out really well. For the first time in her life, my d lived with Christmas decorations (which she's always wanted~!) and got an Easter basket. And roommate helped "light" the candles on the electric menorah and found that she loved hamentashen. </p>
<p>Even though it seemed that they had nothing in common, d and her roommate became very close friends.</p>
<p>And this is a school that does random matching.</p>
<p>Some years ago, when I was writing "propaganda" for Smith, I did a piece on roommates for an alumnae publication. One very successful pair of roomies featured in the story included a Midwestern Protestant minister's daughter and a Vietnamese Buddhist. The two were teamed together as freshmen and lived together every year thereafter, even when it would have been easy for them to get single rooms. </p>
<p>But, despite their success as roommates, they both told me that they didn't really hang out with each other outside of the room ... they had different interests and different friends. Yet their compatible living habits and general concern for one another made them terrific roommates. Don't know what happened to them since graduation. It would be interesting to see if they're still in touch. But even if not, their situation certainly worked well for the duration of their college experience.</p>
<p>A neighbor boy just found out his freshman roomie is gay. He and his family are not upset but are a little uneasy. Added to that was when friend's son talked with roomie about bringing room things he said he is bringing a tv but will not be sharing it so he also needed to bring his own but he wouldn't be bringing a fridge so could he use his. Should be an interesting year!</p>
<p>It didn't come about through freshman roommate matching but I (suburban white) chose to live with a (suburban) African American classmate. I learned a lot more than she did, starting with the difficulty of finding off campus housing since there was only room for freshmen on campus. We eventually rented a room in the African American section of the city with an African American hairdresser landlady. I learned about the hours my roommate had to go through every weekend to straighten her very long hair, also about the chitlins she bought from a neighbor every Friday night.</p>
<p>We had a great time together and remained friendly for several years after we both graduated and married. Sadly, she has since died.</p>
<p>My favorite thing is how UVA Housing seems to do what they want to be funny: they made an entire suite of girls whose middle name was Elizabeth and waited to see how long it would take them to figure it out.</p>
<p>Moderator Note:With apologies to our members, we are closing this thread. It has become the target of relentless spammers. Perhaps those who wish to continue the discussion could open a new thread, with a slightly different title, and we can hope for less trouble. Thank you for your understanding.</p>