As my freshman year begins to close, I’ve realized I could have been more prepared for what comes with living in dorms.
I have many problems living in resident halls that could be fixed with better training for residential advisors to discuss boundaries and enforce rules. One of my issues is the gray area of boundaries.
Since most dorms house first-year students who just graduated high school, most have not lived by themselves. Living alone can cause problems, especially with people from various backgrounds in such proximity to each other.
Everyone defines cleanliness, loudness, late and early in different ways, which is okay if you, your suite-mate and your roommate talk about it. Fortunately, we filled out a paper agreement discussing certain issues, but it didn’t account for all the “special cases” that could happen.
One example is bringing guests over. If I say I am comfortable with people coming over, and they stay over more than one day and night, did I approve of that? No, I did not. But I didn’t say that in the beginning.
This is what I had trouble with. How can I express my boundaries without policing everything they do? I didn’t come to school for someone to act like my parents.
Someone else I talked to about their dorm experience explained how their roommate explicitly told her that she believed being LGBTQ was wrong and that she was not going to heaven when they first met. What do you do in this situation? I think this is another side of the gray area because the roommate technically did not threaten her, so it would not cause someone to be kicked out, but it is something that I would keep in the back of my mind if I were her.
The roommate would laugh about the LGBTQ community going to hell on the phone while she was in the room.
I feel like RAs should have discussed topics that may be uncomfortable but need to have a clear set of boundaries and how to treat each other despite any differences.
Another thing the RAs could do to have a peaceful community for everyone is to stop trying to be friendly. As an RA, it is not your job to be a parent, but it is your job to make sure everyone is comfortable on your floor.
My floor had a problem with yelling and running around at 3 in the morning on a Tuesday, clearly exceeding quiet hours. This issue would happen for weeks. The RAs would not say anything, even with the multiple complaints by the floor residents.
One of them claimed to be sleeping through it, and the other was friends with some of the people. You should call out your own friends, it should even be easier to do so. The quiet hour problem started getting out of control because they were not enforcing the rule at the beginning of the year.
I understand trying to be nice during the beginning of the year, but doing that leads to no one taking them seriously. A similar story goes for the food and trash left in the hallway, there was always a slight problem with this. It just got worse throughout the school year.
There were meetings about this, but there weren’t any actual repercussions, so people didn’t care. Only now have they had a meeting about it with real consequences, allowing me to sleep peacefully.
I don’t blame the RAs for other residents’ actions, seeing as they are also students seeking free housing. There needs to be more to the job that you wouldn’t be particularly popular for, and that’s okay.
If we work on that aspect of living in dorms, I think it would be a lot better. People would have a lot fewer negative stories about their experience living here.
C.E. – EC
C.E. C.F. / AM