One Sunday afternoon, a sophomore communication major opened the door to her three-person Fargo dorm room to find something more than just a $39.99 coverlet from Linens ‘N’ Things on her futon. There, spooning on the futon, was an unidentifiable young man, and an anonymous young lady, mostly naked, except for a flannel shirt serving as a blanket. Four purple condom wrappers lay scattered on the aquamarine carpet, and a few unused condoms were draped over a wastebasket’s lip.
At a university where thousands of students move in with strangers each semester, it is inevitable that some will find nightmares residing in the top bunk. As many students with roommate horror stories pointed out, addressing the problems, having a mutual respect, and a dash of patience could be the key in avoiding awkwardness and explosive confrontations. Some students make friends for life. Others make enemies.
What the naive student did next, she regrets to this day: she turned around and walked away, letting the foreign love-makers enjoy their slumber. A place she called home became a nightmare, yet she couldn’t bring herself to talk to her roommate, who had let the couple in, about it.
“I should have confronted her right then and there,” she said. “It would have given me the peace of mind that it wouldn’t happen again on my futon when I wasn’t in the room.”
When Carlos Hernandez and Alex Montero realized their roommate was the source of a bodily stench powerful enough to keep their friends away, they tried having loud conversations where the word “shower” was mentioned “20 times a minute,” Montero said.
But it wasn’t enough. The men, both seniors and majoring in communication, tried to get their fourth roommate to intervene. No luck.
Meanwhile, their roommate’s funk became even more of a menace. “He smelled,” Montero recalled, “like the city dump.” Montero even went so far as sealing up his closet curtain to shield his belongings from the odorous pollution.
The worst was yet to come, however.
It was six in the morning.
Montero and Hernandez entered their room to hear the click-clack, click-clack of one single hand touching the keyboard.
And there it was: the full indecent moon of their roommate’s butt.
“Hi guys,” was all that sputtered out of their roommate’s mouth.
Montero and Hernandez shared a disgusted disbelief as their colleague sat, eyes dancing across a porno-infested computer screen. No one moved, not even their roommate, who was undaunted by the presence of other men in the room while he shamelessly pleasured himself.
Unfortunately, Montero and Hernandez can not attest to this being their only account of witnessing their roommate and his porn collection, as he often viewed it while they were sleeping, assuming they were deaf, dumb, and blind.
Thinking he would have the room to himself for one night, Montero foolishly convinced himself it would be safe to bring his lady friend back to the room. Just as they were reaching a passionate hormonal frenzy, the odorously foul roommate entered and pretended as though nothing was going on, even taking a peek for himself.
No privacy was granted to Montero that evening, as his roommate assumed they did not care.
Most of the time Montero and Hernandez just avoided their room to escape the unsanitary lifestyle of their roommate. Luckily, the situation did not interfere immensely with their social lives, but their silence did nothing to make the situation developing within their quad more bearable.
Mark Vittore, a pharmacy student who transferred from Geneseo this semester, had a mutual respect with his freshmen year roommate from the first day. They would go out together, as Vittore described it, “You know how when you get to college your roommate is your best friend for the first couple weeks, it was like that.”
Second semester, Vittore’s roommate joined a fraternity, unrecognized by Geneseo, that had a strong reputation for drinking. “He would come home blackout drunk multiple times on weekdays, and I had a lot of early classes,” he said. “When he got home he would wake me up.” Vittore added, “But I’m such a light sleeper that I didn’t hold it against him.”
Soon, however, Vittore said, “He started to be a bastard about things.”
A freshly cleaned load of laundry, a coat, multiple CDs and video games, and a shower caddy became victims, along with Vittore’s respect for his roommate. Vittore recalled, “I woke up one night at two or three in the morning and there was my 300-pound roommate pissing on my stuff in the closet. I’m like, ‘Dude! What the hell are you doing? Stop!’”
Vittore stood confused, angered, tired, and shocked and recognized he had two choices: he could go to an RA and screw the kid over (seeing as his roommate was already on disciplinary probation for stealing food from the dining hall) or he could find someone else to help him clean it up.
With his friend from down the hall, Vittore furiously washed four loads of laundry, discarded his toothbrush, and dried his CDs, while his roommate lay in a comatose sleep.
Vittore was reimbursed for his destroyed belongings and gained a newfound awkwardness in his dorm room for the rest of the year. However, the situation brought with it a new friendship. The friend who had helped Vittore clean up urine in the wee hours of the morning became his roommate the next year in a suite. “He’s the kind of guy you can depend on,” Vittore said.
The many college students who enter a dormitory living situation learn their lessons the hard way when it comes to managing problematic roommates. Some survive, taking valuable education and friendships away from the situation, and others barely make it out alive.
Vittore offered one piece of advice on how to handle a toxic roommate: “Do your best not to step on each other’s toes. It really sucks living with someone you hate.”
