<p>DD just moved into her dorm, and her roommate has brought and hidden a small amount of marijuana in their room. DD is afraid of getting in trouble due to her roommate's possession. Roommate is otherwise lovely. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Tricky situation. Best is to review school policies and procedures. Kids will probably be hearing a lot about all that in the days to come. Your daughter is right to be worried, especially if her roomie is starting the year this way. Her RA is probably her first and best resource.</p>
<p>I think it is very unfortunate that the roomie even shared this information with your poor D, ignorance often is the very best defense. Poor D! That being said, down to what to do now: First: I don’t need to know but you and D need to consider what kind of school is your D at and what state? Some states and schools take the possession issue much more lightly or seriously than others. If she is, for example, at UC Santa Cruz, it is not much of an issue since the city of Santa Cruz does not consider mere possession of pot to be much of a violation of law. However, at a private, strict LAC in an uber-anti marijuana state, BIG ISSUE!<br>
If your D doesn’t want to report it (and I totally understand why), your D should ask her to put it in a place that made it clear that it was roommate’s and not hers–makeup bag, under her sheets, hidden deep in the roomie’s luggage, etc. “Masking it” with coffee in a tightly sealed bag is also not a bad idea.</p>
<p>I think your D needs to assert herself with the roomie and flat tell her they could BOTH get in serious trouble if the marijuana is found and that she needs to remove it from the room NOW in order to protect both of them. If the roomie doesn’t comply then your D needs to have a discussion with the RA about it right away before THEY get caught.</p>
<p>
No - it needs to be out of the room.</p>
<p>
Again, no - from UCSC’s website -</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://porter.ucsc.edu/porter-families/faqs/policies-behavior-faqs.html[/url]”>http://porter.ucsc.edu/porter-families/faqs/policies-behavior-faqs.html</a></p>
<p>get a single room!</p>
<p>She needs to tell the roomie to keep her stash out of the dorm room,no ifs, ands or buys.</p>
<p>Buts not buys…</p>
<p>T
ime for a mutually -requested roommate switch, incompatible expectations, without leveling with RA or administration about root cause. Girl could start hiding it in D’s stuff. No matter how nice she may seem, she isn’t ready to be a good roommate for D.</p>
<p>Whenever these sorts of issues arise, the advice is always to get a new roommate. As if that were so very easy to do, especially for a freshman! Even with pretty serious incompatibility issues, the process tends to be difficult and drawn-out at most schools. The OP needs helpful suggestions for what to do right now.</p>
<p>Well, right now, the D could sit down with roomie and say, “I like you, and I’d like to stay roommates. But I can’t take the risk of having marijuana in my room. Can we agree you’ll keep it out of the room? If not, I’ll need to talk to the RA.” </p>
<p>If the RA knows, a room change might be expedited. Even if it’s not, the D is on record as wanting out, which I would think would be some protection in case of a bust.</p>
<p>Las Mas is right about the wisdom of making a record of having wanted out. The RA is part of the administration (a student, yes, but employed by the school) and telling the RA is telling the administration. You can’t expect the RA to keep secrets from her boss, and in a sense, she may become responsible for it, too, if she is told and does nothing. There is no predicting how the RA will react if she is told. The way to bet is that she will pass the information upstream and be open about who told her what. If the roommate understands that D is working with her to effectuate a roommate switch without telling why, the roommate may be motivated to help. If they request a switch without getting to the point about why, the RA will probably ask why, want to mediate it, counsel them about communicating in “I” messages and working out a schedule together, etc., which is all beside the point.</p>
<p>D is not the one who should have to move to a less desirable location, because D hasn’t breached the understanding of what is and is not acceptable to foist off on a stranger. The roommate has created the problem. “I don’t want illegal stuff in my room and she thinks I should have to put up with it” is pretty simple, really, when you’re paying to be there. Whatever the roommate says about her intentions going forward, you can’t be sure. This could be a one-off first time away from home thing, or this could be normal for her and something she can’t or won’t give up.</p>
<p>There’s also the risk of going from the frying pan to the fire by switching roommates, as the roommate seems otherwise nice, and she did level with D about what she was doing, so maybe she was looking for agreement, and maybe she’s fundamentally nice enough to approach it differently now that she knows. But realistically, if pot is important to her, she will be keeping it somewhere, and probably in that room.</p>
<p>Giving her tips about how to hide it, such as in coffee, is the same thing as helping her to hide it, and may give D a share of the responsibility.</p>
<p>If the roommate swears she’s gotten rid of it, that would seem to lessen D’s responsibility, and maybe D can ride out the situation on that basis until she can pick a better roommate (such as second year, or maybe second semester when some people don’t come back.)</p>
<p>So you are saying that the RA knowing that the issue is that one of the girls had drugs in the room and the other girls was uncomfortable with it, should then switch the drug possessing girl to another room with another unsuspecting roommate? Something seems a little wrong with that scenario. Kind of like passing around abusive priests from parish to parish.</p>
<p>It’s totally unacceptable that the roommate is hiding pot. Pot is to be shared by all and not hoarded.</p>
<p>I’m just kidding of course.</p>
<p>The student is an adult most likely. She has to handle these things herself as she will be confronted with these situations time and again, probably very shortly. As a parent, you can listen to what she has to say, go over her choices, but ultimately, it is her decision on how to deal with it. She might find her RA siiting there smoking pot and offer her some when she goes in to talk to her…and no, I’m not kidding. alk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1382489-freshman-all-over-again.html lesds you to a NYT article that might be worth readiing .</p>
<p>Well, the year my son lived in a “substance-free” dorm, his RA smoked pot regularly.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>History repeats itself. This is a link to a piece in today’s New York Times about a mother dropping her kid off at college and remembering her fist day at Wesleyan 36 years ago:</p>
<p><a href=“The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos”>The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos;
<p>To put things in perspective, my junior roommate received cakes of reefer in the mail. They were from his parents. My frat brothers would leave hash brownies on my dorm table with the message “Love, Mother”. Problem was I was chem-free. But I was usually the designated. In some colleges there is an implicit line. On one side is pot, and on the other side, cocaine.</p>
<p>If getting busted is her concern, DD should also be prepared to deal with other contraband as well; possession of alcohol by someone under 21 is also against the rules according to most college handbooks. If she thinks the friendship is worth salvaging, both roommates should get busy setting some ground rules around the issue of <em>usage</em> rather than the possession (if one of them is using, that person will be stashing it as well.) At a minimum, there should be no parties, and no blazing, even when DD is not around. Pot smokers should be approached the same way as cigarette smokers when it comes to sharing a confined space.</p>
<p>OTOH, if she wants to get a new roommate, the time to do it is NOW while things are still fluid and while there’s still time to repair any ruffled feelings (I wouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of keeping any of this confidential.)</p>
<p>I agree with the suggestion up thread - make sure it’s stashed with the roommate’s personal belongings.</p>
<p>Beyond that, a non-accusatory conversation with the roommate about ground rules (I prefer that “x” not take place in our room) would seem like a good place to start. If the roommate is “otherwise lovely,” this shouldn’t be too difficult.</p>
<p>If, as also suggested above, this is a school that’s known to be quite conservative about such things, then the OP’s daughter may need to take more extreme measures, but I would hope that’s not the case.</p>
<p>At the school my son attends this is a very serious offense. I will check with him, but I believe that the school my son attends, if one is caught with illegal drugs one is suspended for one semester, and cannot move back onto the campus for one year. This does not apply to underage drinking. I think that for underage drinking there is a 3 strike type of policy, but I don’t know the exact details. I would encourage my son to go to the RA, residence life, or to a person that are they told to report such situations.</p>
<p>OP, it is a very tough spot that your DD was placed in, but in my opinion she needs to protect her college future.</p>