So during freshman year, which was a long, long time ago (2005~2006), I lived with a roommate who smoked weed. I recall that on the next room was someone who even dealt weed. Obviously this was an annoying situation where twice or three times a week I’d discover my roommate’s friends bringing friends to smoke ‘bongs’ or a sort of boiled marijuana.
Somehow I had felt a sort of moral duty not to act as a mole against my roommate and drug use in general; after all, what was college for, or at the time I thought, since I was a freshman, that college was an escape from the stresses of high school.
To be specific, I think, in retrospect, the following was what was going through my mind.
One is of trying to ‘look cool’, that not tolerating illicit behavior that isn’t obviously immoral, isn’t the ‘cool’ thing to do. Naturally, I was also a rebellious 18~19 year old. Not necessarily peer pressure, but the ‘habitus’ that Bourdieu had referred to, or in other words, conforming to the rebellious social norms during youth.
Second, even then,I had always felt the law was the law whatever the case, which I think is the ‘all laws are just’ view (dura lex, sed lex?), so it was morally right to actually report everyone I’d seen using drugs.
Third, I’d thought that since as an international student, I was an observer and a newcomer(a ‘fresh off the boat’, as later I learned the expression), I had yet to judge peoples’ behavior. I was more attuned to finding out what the norms were before I would be confident enough to make judgments.
Fourth, I am Asian, so the conflict resolution style that was most natural to me were the avoidance and accommodation, or at least according to a paper that I read (1) so either I put up with drug users, or (2) I avoid them.
And these two actions were exactly those that I had taken; I didn’t really push my roommate and co. to stop smoking unless they stayed later than 10 PM or so. Still sometimes they would stay for 2 hours or more at a time. This was also the case for sexiling; I’d not say that my roommate was extremely callous about my well-being, but he did bring girls about four or five times during the 1 year we were together, mostly during the second semester. Thanks to which I saw the naked backs of two women…which was still unsightly; I wanted to relax but my roommate would wake me up quite often. One time I even got locked out since I’d left the keys in the room or something.
In the end, I didn’t do anything about the nerve-wracking and destructive behaviors of my roommate. Since then, I always opted out of the housing lottery and always requested single dorms, which I got eventually; except for a few months during junior year where I, again, got stuck with a physicist-turned-music major who actually brought a drum set into the room, and played drums now and then at 10 PM, which is rude to say the least.
Should I have taken action to (1) stop whatever my roommate was doing, especially with respect to drugs? I’m also aware that recently colleges have been trying hard to uproot sexiling, or (2) asked the RA or ResLife to move me in with another roommate?
Any thoughts? I know I’m beating at a done issue, but I might be returning to the US for an MBA in the near future, and employment later on, and in the least I’d rather not repeat the mistakes of lacking assertiveness (when I’m drunk I’m much more outspoken, though).