Is Communication the Key?
Chelsey Glynne, November 4th, 2009 Karren Daun, a freshman at the University of Nevada Reno, was excited to move in to the dorms. Daun had no reasons to worry. She was moving in with a girl she knew from high school and thought that living in the dorms with a familiar face would be a good time. That is until this familiar face starting bringing home different faces every night.
After a bad roommate experience Karren Daun now prefers to study in the library.
“She brought home a different guy every night,” Daun said. “She would bring them home at all sorts of hours. If I was home and she got back with someone I would finish what I was doing and leave when they started kissing.” Daun would then be exiled to the hallway where she would get on her phone and call around for a place to stay.
“ I would stay at my cousins, or my sorority house,” Daun said.”It was better than listening to her.”
Jerome Maese, the associate director for residential Life, said that dorm residents are expected to be adults and work through any issues relating to guests.
“We expect our university students to be adults,” Maese said. “They need to sit down and have those heart-to- heart conversations.”
Maese said that there is no way to enforce what two thousand college kids living in the dorms are doing in regards to guests and roommates.
“They sign their contracts and need to communicate,” Maese said. “If there is a problem they then need to come to their RA or the RD and set up mediation.”
He said that a part of the college experience is living in the dorms, learning these compromising skills and learning how to live with other people even when there are problems.
Jerome Maese, the Associate Director of Reidential Life, feels that communication is the key to a positive roommate experience.
While Maese feels that communication can solve anything, Daun knows that even after talking to her roommate, the behavior wasn’t going to change.
“We tried mediation after the first time she broke our roommate agreement,” Daun said. “We made a new agreement that basically said no guests during the week, and hey she broke that too.”
Maese feels that with communication and mediation that roommates can remedy their problems.
“Living with someone is never easy,” Maese said. “ Residents just need to have those long heart to hearts, communicate and compromise, and they will be able to figure it out.”
Ricky Delarosa, a sophomore, who lived in the dorms, last year, says that he feels roommates can work through their problems.
“My roommate always had people, over,” Delarosa said. “We sat down on day one and worked out a system of what we would say in text messages when we had girls over. It was never an issue because we both went Greek so when he would have a girl over, I would just go to the house.”
Krista McCord, a freshman currently living in Argenta, said that her roommate and she also have talked about what they will do when they have people over, although her roommate hasn’t held up her end of the deal.
“She brings home her boyfriend all the time,” McCord said. “I like the guy he’s nice, but I don’t like feeling awkward in my room, so I leave. But when it’s midnight and I just got home from the library and I still have a paper to work on I don’t want to leave, and I feel rude asking him to leave.”
McCord and her roommate have talked and every time, her roommate apologizes, and says she will work on it, but then never does, leaving McCord in the dorm hall for hours waiting.
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