Wednesday, September 16, 2015 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, September 16, 2015 // The Statement 
5B

W

hen Jack arrived and met his 
roommate his freshman year, 
things were going great.

The two, living in Northwood III on 

North Campus together, weren’t 

best friends, necessarily, but 

spoke regularly, played 

video games, and 

occasionally 

hung out. 

Then, upon returning from spring break, their friendly rela-
tionship changed suddenly.

“He refuses to respond to me and talk to me, and I have no 

idea why,” Jack recalled of the sudden shut out.

And that’s when Jack started noticing peculiar behaviors: 

His roommate would be drunk on weekdays, lock Jack out of 
the room — leaving Jack without a change of clothes for three 
to four days.

Jack’s whirlwind of a story isn’t a peculiar one. It’s some-

thing college roommates see increasingly across the country.

At an orientation session over the summer, incoming stu-

dents and their parents were asked a simple question: “By a 

show of hands, how many of you shared a room growing 

up?”

The vast majority of the parents in the room 

raised their hands. Most of the incoming 

class of 2015 kept their hands down.

This generational gap is due in 

part to the modern cultural 

trend toward smaller 

families, a New 

York Times 

article 

reported. Room-sharing inexperience, along with other cur-
rent societal factors, may be to blame for the rapid rise in 
roommate conflict on college campuses nationwide, according 
to the piece.

Additionally, texting and social media, cornerstones of the 

Millennial generation, both provide outlets for roommates to 
hide from direct confrontation behind the comfort of their cell 
phone screens.

However, Pamela Davis-Kean, a University professor spe-

cializing in developmental psychology, said there is no empiri-
cal evidence to support that social media and texting have 
directly increased roommate conflict. She added that a lack of 
communication is an issue affecting people of all ages.

“I don’t think college students are any better or any worse 

than people are at trying to figure out: how do you tell someone 
that they’re really annoying you?” Davis-Kean said. “There’s 
always been roommate conflict.”

She does, however, believe that texting and the convenience 

of communication have led to the “prolonged parenthood.” In 
the age of constant communication, parents are more connect-
ed to their children, and therefore more likely to continue par-
enting their child well beyond his or her twentieth birthday.

This extension of adolescence is a potential indication of 

college students’ increased dependence on their parents to 
solve their conflicts, especially their roommates.

Carrie Landrum, program manager at the Office of 

Student Conflict Resolution, said many cases of 

roommate conflict — in fact, the majority of 

cases OSCR sees — stem from a lack of 

direct communication.

“The anonymity that often 

comes with using some 

social 
media 
plat-

forms contrib-

utes 
to 

peo-

ple saying things in a different way than they might if they saw 
them in person,” Landrum said.

Landrum said this phenomenon is rooted in neuroscience. Mir-

ror neurons in the brain are activated when we act and when we 
observe others performing those same actions, allowing humans 
to identify and recognize basic universal facial expressions, such 
as happiness, hurt and sadness.

But when electronic communication preclude face-to-face 

interaction, roommates can struggle to understand each other’s 
emotional responses.

“We can exacerbate conflict rather than make it better,” Lan-

drum said.

Roommate relationships also suffer when students avoid com-

munication altogether. Landrum said silent expectations, stan-
dards to which roommates hold each othver but don’t express 
openly, can set students up for failure.

For Kaitlyn, a nursing sophomore who lived in Oxford dorms 

last year, a lack of communication defined her negative housing 
experience. After choosing to room blind — an option Housing 
reports 62 percent of incoming freshman choose — Kaitlyn found 
her roommate to be shy and unfriendly.

“We were civil to each other and it was fine — no big deal,” Kai-

tlyn recalled.

However, things turned ugly when Kaitlyn asked her room-

mate to let Kaitlyn’s boyfriend, who goes to another school, stay 
in their room overnight. Kaitlyn recalls her roommate refused to 
discuss the issue.

“Because she refused to talk to me straight up in the beginning, 

from then on the only times we did talk it was very hostile,” Kait-
lyn said. “I kind of avoided her. We slept in the same room, but we 
didn’t talk, and then when I tried to reassess the situation and talk 
to her, it was just a hostile experience.”

Kaitlyn’s roommate switched dorms shortly after Fall Break 

and cut ties on social media.

According to Amir Baghdadchi, University Housing spokesper-

son, roommates’ unwillingness to even address uncomfortable 
issues is a common occurrence.

“In housing, when we see a conflict arise, the first thing we’re 

trying to do is understand ‘OK, have these roommates even talked 
about it,” Baghdadchi said.

Many times Housing officials find the answer is no.
University Housing requires all students sharing a room in a 

residence hall to fill out a “roommate contract” within the first 
week of school. Students fill out items such as what they feel com-
fortable with their roommate borrowing, how they feel about 
overnight guests, and any cultural identities or customs they want 
their roommates to respect. 

Baghdadchi said the roommate contract works as a preventa-

tive measure, forcing students to have the uncomfortable conver-
sations they might otherwise avoid.

“If you think about it, when you have two or more people who 

have never lived with someone before — certainly they haven’t 
lived with someone who they just met or is outside their family — 
neither of them wants to be the kind of roommate that brings up 
uncomfortable stuff,” Baghdadchi said.

Though these contracts may initiate communication between 

roommates, further conflicts naturally arise. In these situations, 
University Housing recommends students seek help from the 
Office of Student Conflict Resolution, which offers resources such 
as one-on-one conflict coaching sessions and mediation services 

to students living both on and off campus.

At first, Jack, who experienced sudden conflict with his room-

mate freshman year, didn’t want to escalate the problem further.

“I didn’t want to get the University involved if I didn’t have to,” 

Jack said.

Finally, Jack e-mailed his residential adviser that he was no 

longer comfortable living in his room. In response, the University 
organized a peer mediation session between Jack and his room-
mate.

However, Jack says his roommate denied everything at the 

session, saying he was a heavy sleeper and that sometimes he 
couldn’t open their door because he couldn’t hear Jack knocking.

The mediator wrote his story off as a simple case of miscom-

munication, Jack says, and Housing services eventually refused 
to grant Jack a room change, saying that because there were only 
two months left of school, he should “do his best to work it out.”

Immediately after, Jack moved into a friend’s off-campus 

apartment for the remainder of the year.

Reflecting on the situation, Jack said the University failed him, 

and he wished the issues could have been resolved in a more effi-
cient manner.

****

On the topic of student health and academic success, Davis-

Kean, the professor of developmental psychology, said from her 
perspective a University should never say a student has to stay 
with his or her roommate.

“If it’s getting in the way of somebody being academically 

successful at U-M or it’s hurting your mental health or physical 
health, then those are things that we should be doing something 
about,” Davis-Kean said.

While the University has a room swap program that allows stu-

dents to post on the Housing website looking for others’ to trade 
rooms with, this system is dependent on other students’ requests 
and can be a time-sensitive process. This system also assumes 
that a student would be willing to live with the roommate another 
student is actively trying to avoid.

Despite the national rise in roommate conflict outlined in the 

New York Times article, the University Housing maintains that it 
has not seen a rise in roommate conflict.

Though many colleges and universities require students to take 

questionnaires, asking them basic questions like what time they 
generally go to sleep, their partying habits, among others, the Uni-
versity’s roommate matching process is currently random.

For the time being, it appears the system is here to stay.
“We did a pilot a number of years ago with a questionnaire,” 

Housing spokesperson Baghdadchi said. “It turned out to be no 
more successful than rooming blind.”

Mallory Martin, associate director for Housing Student Con-

duct and Conflict Resolution, works with residents, residential 
staff, and hall directors across campus to address conflict resolu-
tion. 

In an e-mail to The Michigan Daily, Martin wrote because 

many roommate conflicts are inherently different in nature, each 
requires a different path to resolution. 

“Conflict can show up in different ways so there is not one 

approach or pathway for all resolutions. It starts with listening, 
and trying to understand what’s underneath the conflict: part of 
the issue could be a health condition or stress, for example so we 
want to make sure we’re really helping in the right way.”

Toeing the line: 

Navigating roommate conflicts at the ‘U’

by Lara Moehlman, Daily Staff Reporter

PHOTOS BY LUNA ANNA ARCHEY

