<p>I’m certainly not “panicking”. I hope you’re right and I’m wrong!</p>
<p>When will my daughter’s the dorm calm down??? When will they de-triple? The swine flu will spread faster with crowded tripled dorms.</p>
<p>If things are truly as wild as you say they are (which I doubt) things will certainly quiet down when students start getting grades back if their grades are poor. On the other hand, the other students may be getting their work done just fine and can handle socializing every night.</p>
<p>My guess is that students will be de-tripled as beds become available…in other words, no time soon as where are empty beds to come from? If they had been empty to begin with there would not have been tripling. Fortunately or unfortunately, AU’s yield this year was higher than predicted.</p>
<p>What positive things has your daughter reported? Does she like her classes, has she made some friends?</p>
<p>What is she doing to deal with the things that are bothering her? Has she knocked politely on a loud neighbor’s door to ask that the stereo be turned down because she has an early class? Has she identified a quieter floor that she might want to move to, should an opening arise there? </p>
<p>I don’t think a mom calling the RA to complain is going to accomplish a whole lot, especially if only one person finds the situation unacceptable. A dorm is not like a private single family home…they are noisy and crowded and communal and most students are not going to sleep at 10 or 11 oclock.</p>
<p>My D had an e-mail that detripling is beginning/has begun. If your D’s room comes up for detripling they have to decide which student will move out. If they refuse the offer, their room goes to the bottom of the list. Or so it was explained to her.</p>
<p>My son describes his floor as being disappointingly quiet (honors floor); he rather envies the rocking 4th floor in his dorm…</p>
<p>As a mother, I pray that he is GOING TO CLASS and keeping up, not just socializing nonstop.</p>
<p>Boysx:</p>
<pre><code> She does like her classes, but finds the tripled room extremely crowded, claustraphobic. She and and her roommates try to quiet the others. She says they are quiet for about 5 minutes and then continue with the noise. Many are older athletes. She can’t get enough sleep because of the noise and the RA only reprimands those around her own room not my daughter’s side of the hall. She said on Sun. and Mon. night the noise and running up and dwon the hall went on til around 2 A.M. This is negligent on AU’s part. My daughter and her roommates cannot police this large T-shaped hall with alot of athletes.
</code></pre>
<p>If your room is offered de-tripling, do they tell you where the third person is going??</p>
<p>cadmiumred,</p>
<p>What you need to be doing is giving your daughter strategies for coping with a situation you consider to be less than ideal, not just feeding any angst she may be feeling. </p>
<p>The fact is that she is on a floor you believe to be too noisy… sometimes a random floor just gets a lot of kids who are night owls and your daughter got the short straw this time around. Maybe she can find someone who would like to swap off of deidretours son’s floor? Apparently that floor is too quiet!</p>
<p>I’m not sure what it means that she can’t police “the athletes.” Are they a special category of student? My experience with athletes is that they are more disciplined than most students because they have the same amount of work as all the other students, and a lot less time in which to do it because of their athletic obligations. My guess is that if it is a group of athletes who are being a little loud, that they are just getting back to the dorm after a day of running, lifting, practice, meetings, and required study tables, not to mention classes, labs and clubs. If they are just goofing off in the halls while going back and forth between rooms, and not having a raucous party, I don’t think the RA is going to do anything about it, especially if your D is the only one complaining. Unfortunately your daughter is just going to have to adapt to the situation.</p>
<p>I can understand feeling closed in living in a triple…it’s a situation affecting close to half the students in the class from what I have been told. There are 3 large men in the room next to my sons and they can barely turn around…all of the three are well over 6 feet, and two are “beefy.” But they are getting along well and basically use the room only to sleep. They study and socialize in the hall lounges instead. </p>
<p>I’m sure your D and her roomies have adapted similarly. Have they decided which of the three will choose to move out? Will your daughter complain about the hassle of moving if she is the odd one out?</p>
<p>Has she considered earplugs or a small white noise machine (actually, even a fan usally provides enough noise to drown out hall noise)?</p>
<p>Frequently, I come to cc to carryon about things that are worrying me a bit that I wouldn’t want to worry/nag/harrass son about. I wonder if Cadiumred does the same? That is, that she if broadcasting here as a healthier substitute for feeding daughter’s worries?</p>
<p>I’m also wondering how detripling will work (though if there are that many triples this year, sounds like it won’t be working for too many people anyway). D is not so enamored of her roommates that she wouldn’t be happy to detriple, but how to decide which one moves? (I imagine that in a boys room the first one to yell out “I’m leaving” would prevail, while it would be an angsty and fraught process with girls.) And then the question arises of whether one might be going from the frying pan into the fire. I wonder if the departing students have a chance to meet and vet the proposed new roommate before making a commitment? Two tolerable roommates are a lot better deal than one horrible one!</p>
<p>As it was explained to my D and me on move in day…the housing office notifies all three members of the triple by e-mail that the opportunity for detripling exists. The students are told where the move would be and can go check it out and check out the potential roommate. The poor roomie to be - kind of like getting checked out and bought or now. Anyhow…the 3 students then have to decide if one of them is going to take it and which one it is. THey decide this themselves. There is no “you paid your deposit last so you are first out” rule. If the student chose NOT to accept the offer they are put at the bottom of the list and the next triple room gets the offer…and so on. That, at least, is how it was explained to us. Certainly there is the possibility of frying pan into the fire…and they didn’t say if ALL the triples were able to be detripled or not. I would guess that varies annually. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>When my D1 was at CMU they used the “last to pay the deposit leaves” rule. And that was easier I think. The extra student in her room knew that she’d be leaving and didn’t unpack everything, and when the call came, there was no angst over who went and where. She just went. Too bad, she was really nice!</p>
<p>My daughter is using ear plugs and other methods to drown out sound and light. Her roommates are now staying up until 2 a.m. She said they have really late, easy classes everyday. She has to yell now at them sometimes because they have become so inconsiderate. One even asked my D. who was diligently writing a paper, to leave the room so she could take a nap alone in the room as a result of staying up late all of the time.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation, khsstiches. It’s hard for me to imagine that they could detriple everyone, or even many–where could all that extra space come from? It’s a mystery to me how all this works. One of D’s roommates, the least sociable, has very few possessions, and would find moving the easiest, but I don’t see how that could be engineered politely unless she chose to go.</p>
<p>cadmiumred, I think it’s unrealistic to expect to get much work done in a triple unless everyone happens to be studying at the same time. The room really becomes just a place to eat and change clothes. D and her roommates have very different schedules; one goes to bed very early, another sleeps in. D has had a cold and has taken a few naps during the day. Their rule seems to be that the person who’s sleeping gets priority, regardless of the time of day or night, and the others work around her. D’s found it works for her to study in the lounge early in the mornings. The library is always an alternative. Back when I was in college, I didn’t much care for my roommate’s company (the understatement of the year) and worked most evenings in the library, as did most of my friends. We would take a break together and get something to eat or drink–it was a comfortable routine. Living in a crowded dorm is very different from living in a comfortable private home, and flexibility is required. My D spent her summers in camp cabins that make her AU situation look palatial, so she is accustomed to rolling with the punches.</p>
<p>She “has to yell because they have become so inconsiderate”? Really? So, your daughter is in conflict with both of her roommates, the ra and everyone on her floor, but it is everybody else’s fault??? Oh my.</p>
<p>MommaJ:</p>
<pre><code>The other girls do not care that my daughter is trying to sleep at all. No consideration at all! She has to try so many methods to attempt to get some sleep. Their staying up until 2 A.M. is not healthy for anyone, even those with the later classes. It is like a prison with unruly inmates. One of the roommates has mental issues, stares at the others constantly and doesn’t speak much. She put her mucus tissues in the shoes of the other 2. She threw the rest of her tissues around the room. Now do you see what my daughter is dealing with?
</code></pre>
<p>Cadmium,
If your daughter is at odds with everyone around her she needs to look in the mirror and maybe adjust her expectations. She is living in a normal dorm situation,it’s not ever going to be quiet and orderly like a private home. All the students have different schedules, different classes, personalities, and abilities.</p>
<p>She may or may not have weird roomies. Every time you post you have more and stranger accusations against them. Is she in the room all the time? Do the roomies maybe feel she is monopolizing the room?</p>
<p>What are your daughter’s activities other than going to class? Is she in the room all the time? Who does she eat with, what activities is she becoming involved in? Who are her new friends, and what does she enjoy doing with them?</p>
<p>My other question is how you are informed of everything in such minute detail. I love my boys and we talk/text frequently but I sure don’t know every aspect of his life in detail. Maybe you need to give her a little space to find her own solutions.</p>
<p>This all sounds like the “take me home” letter I wrote from summer camp to my mom when I was eight.</p>
<p>For better or worse, I grew up.</p>
<p>I doubt that all the triples can be downgraded to doubles, either. Its just wait and see. And the students having to pick themselves definitely adds stress. If no one volunteers that makes it very hard. D is using the library for homework and also a study room in her dorm. Easier than being crowded into a triple.</p>
<p>I think it’s time that we stop banging our heads against the wall by responding to cadmiumred’s ceaseless (I refer any newbies to the notorious “Nightmare at AU” thread) and exhaustively detailed (“mucus tissue”???) complaints. If you take a look at her postings on the Cornell board (she also has a freshman there), you’ll see an unending stream of detailed inquiries about the minutiae of course registration and the like (as well as a complaint about who is teaching the classes), to the extent that many of the responders there were under the impression that she herself was the student! (They have also lost patience.) She isn’t going to disentangle herself from her kids lives anytime soon, will continue to find all her glasses half empty, and will take no advice or consolation from anyone here. She clearly needs a puppy to keep her busy, and since we can’t provide one, there’s nothing to be done.</p>
<p>Got my vote, Momma J…</p>