Roommate From Hell

In August, I received the name and address of my roommate. Like most people, I was quite excited to find out who I’d be living with my freshman year and started having thoughts of having an instant best friend, having the coolest room complete with matching comforters, and having late night talks about all those "girl topics" – boys, make-up, shopping, makeup, and so on. Shortly after getting the notice, I called my roommate for the first time.

That first phone call was filled with technical things such as who would take care of bringing or renting a refrigerator, who would worry about packing an iron, and who would bring a TV and VCR. After getting that out of the way, we started to just talk about what we each liked and what normal patterns were like. Well, that’s when I realized that things wouldn’t be as perfect as I thought. She was a morning person; I was a night person. I was a quiet person; she loved rap music. She came from a New York suburb; I came from the middle of the Midwest. I knew that there was no chance that we’d ever be best friends since we were different on almost every point, but I didn’t ever think that I would start my freshman year with 4 months of roommate hell.

On Move In Day, my parents and I arrived on campus in the morning and I got to the room first. I judged the situation and took the bed, dresser, and desk that I wanted. When we were nearly finished, Jane* and her parents arrived. My parents and I introduced ourselves in typical midwestern fashion and awaited a similar response. Much to my surprise, Jane and her family were quite rude and were more concerned with moving her belongings in than saying hi. My things got pushed out of the way when she brought in several large boxes and there were suddenly four people trying to direct their actions – and four people getting in my way of unpacking my things. At this point, I was still holding out hope that we might be able to at least be friendly to each other. As the first autumn days turned into weeks, I soon found out that my hopes of having Jane as my best friend or even any type of friend at all were entirely unrealistic and fruitless.

Nearly right away, my roommate got lured into the numerous fraternity parties thrown each evening and started attending them practically every night. Like most colleges, there was alcohol, pot, and sex at most parties. She started spending nights away from the room (often in the beds of people that she picked up as the night went on) because she was simply too drunk to find her way home. One day after arriving home at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon, she conveyed the events of the previous night to me. It started with her sneaking into a party to avoid paying the cover charge. I found this highly immoral especially since I’m your typical "goodie-two-shoes," but nodded my head and let her continue on with the story. After getting in, she had several drinks (I’d like to point out that she was a minor and most certainly underage) and became heavily intoxicated. At this point, she found some people that she recognized from a party a few nights before and joined their group that was partaking in some ritual pot smoking. While being drunk and high, she found a fraternity member that suited her fancy and decided that he would be her prize for the evening. The pair went into his room and proceeded to have unprotected sex that night. When she got home the next day, she could barely remember what she did the night before and certainly couldn’t remember the finer details such as his name. Her actions that night essentially sum up her activities from the day that we moved in.

I disagreed with her actions on almost every count – I don’t drive, I don’t do drugs, I don’t smoke, I don’t have unprotected sex, and I don’t pick up random guy at parties to spend the night with. In fact, I had a boyfriend before I came to the University whom I’m still very in love with. One weekend my boyfriend came up from another university for the weekend to visit me and spend some time with me. The University has very clear rules pertaining to overnight guests in the dorms: no more than 3 consecutive nights and it can pose no inconvenience to any roommate or suitemate. My boyfriend is quite quiet and wouldn’t have ever thought of creating trouble in any stretch of the imagination. The first night that he had arrived, we settled into bed about midnight with me in my bed and him on the floor. She arrived home with a suitor after we had both fallen asleep and had intentions of having him spend the night there after a little "fun."

The two came in and woke my boyfriend up initially. Her male friend saw that they wouldn’t be alone in the room and said that he wanted to leave, put his hand on the doorknob, and started to leave. She took his hand, saying "No, stay…. I wanna" and then closed the door. They climbed up onto the top bunk and, well, you can imagine what they did at that point. Needless to say, I woke up at this point. After it was over, the two were making out and laughing and having a great time. Jane brought up several issues during their nice round of pillow talk including me, obviously under the impression that I was asleep. Among the highpoints were how much of a "stupid bitch" I am and how ungrateful I was when she offered to replace a mug that she had broken while I was away for the weekend (which is another story altogether since at the time she couldn’t remember what had happened to it). She continued that she hated me and that she wanted to kick both my butt and my boyfriends and clearly stated that she would be able to since she had taken numerous years of karate. Eventually I fell back asleep, but the point was very clear – I wasn’t the only one that wasn’t enjoying our living arrangement. The next morning I expected an apology or at least an acknowledgement that she was out of line the night before, but she never mentioned the events of that night to me.

As the weeks continued to pass, the communication broke down even farther and we got less friendly towards each other. Her friend began to come to the room when they knew that she would be out to ask why I was so mean to my roommate by insisting that there wasn’t a near constant party while I was trying to study and wanting to be able to stay up past eleven (her bedtime on the nights that she wasn’t partying) to finish my work. While I was on the phone, her friends would call in excess of twenty times because call waiting would "beep" each time and interrupt my call. I started just not answering call waiting and she get angered because she would miss some phone calls. On two more occasions I was there when she and a male student "went at it." She wanted me to not allow my boyfriend to visit because his sleeping there made her uncomfortable. I sat back and just went with things because I’m a very non-confrontational person and thought that we might be able to at least coexist if I didn’t pick fights for everything that she did that I disliked (starting with coming home drunk and having sex above me). At one point though, I did go to the RHD and filed a request for a new roommate. Unfortunately, I got involved with a lot of red tape and despite her going as far as threatening me, they couldn’t do more than put me on a waiting list and told me to wait until a room opened up which would likely not be until semester break and might not ever happen. The last straw was when she went out one morning and bought a pet hamster without asking me (they’re allowed only when all roommates agree) and brought it home. Besides my being allergic, she clearly broke the University rule on pets and frankly I was sick of it. At this point, I went to the RA and asked her what I could do about the latest occupant to room 120.

My RA contacted the complex RHD (residence hall director) who became quite concerned. She called a meeting where Jane, our RA, the RHD, and I all sat down together to come to some agreement before Jane and I killed each other. Every point that I brought up, Jane had a reply to that satisfied both the RA and RHD. The night that she brought someone home and told him to stay even though my boyfriend and I were there became an incident of rape because she was too heavily intoxicated to know what was going on. Her objection to my boyfriend was because of religious and morel issues expressed by both her and her mother stating that she wasn’t even allowed to sleep in the room if a boy was sleeping there and would have to sleep elsewhere. Her friends were acting without her saying anything to them and she would talk to them about them harassing me. The wind blew my mug off of the middle of my dresser. Everything had a perfectly rational explanation that painted me as being the bad girl and her as being little Miss Perfect.

Honestly, I was furious. I had put up with so much and now she was lying and there wasn’t anything that I could do about it. Even when I pointed out the flaws in her explanations (such as the rape incident being her fault since she willingly got drunk even though she was underage in the first place), they were dismissed since the RHD wasn’t in the mood to write her up for underage drinking even though she was sitting there admitting to it. I insisted that I wasn’t in the wrong here and that I just wanted out of the situation. After the first meeting, we signed a contract with each other somewhat against my will that basically let her get her way as far as eliminating my right to guests, lights out when she wanted to go to bed, and me being forced to pick up call waiting when I was on the phone for as much as a quarter a minute. Things went on basically how they were before our meeting with the RA and RHD – we barely co-existed and never missed an opportunity to make each other mad. I was still holding out for a new roommate and hoped that it would happen soon since I was no longer comfortable in my room and at times didn’t even feel safe.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, the RHD called saying that there was a single room upstairs from where we were and that one of us could move into it but that we had to decide which one. I wanted the room and I was the one that had put in the request for a new room, so I felt like I should get it but I knew that it would take convincing Jane for me to be able to move. We had 2 hours to agree or else neither of us could have the room. Eventually, I did win and I did get the room. So, the weekend before going home for Turkey Day break, I got to leave the room that I had called home for four months and got to finally have a room where I felt safe and at home.

In the limelight of the events, I feel that what happened to me and Jane shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The day that I stopped feeling safe in my room, I shouldn’t have had to live there. Unfortunately, I was forced to stay there for a couple months past that point and my grades and sanity both suffered greatly. My hope would be that an intervening party would be able to see through the lies, look at the total disrespect that Jane showed for me, and remedy the situation. More than that though, my sincerest hope is that nobody else will have the hellish four months that I had to start off their college experience. College isn’t that bad and now that I am making a home there, I am growing to actually like it there.

* Names have been changed.