the rooming game

Loser's Luck

You've tried ignoring the problem. You've communicated: talked and cajoled and shouted, in fact. You've practically moved in with the person you're dating so that you don't have to go back to your own room. Nothing works, and in the meantime your roommates are ruining your life. Where do you go from here?

According to one first-year in Canaday, nowhere.

"I had a single [in the suite] to begin with, and I could foresee lots of problems coming, so I tried to move out in Novemeber, and the administration wouldn't let me leave," the first-year, who asked to remain anonymous, recounts.

"The girl I was going to have to live with had a serious boyfriend, and he slept over at least two nights a week. He's twenty-three, not a Harvard student, with his own apartment. We switched rooms in January and two nights after I moved into the double, the night before my last final, she and her boyfriend were doing whatever-whatever in my room. I tried to come in, and she made me wait outside until they finished up. So I go in and the room stinks of sex. I can't study in there, so I went to a friend's and just slept over there. I took my final on about three hours of sleep," she recalls angrily.

Rebuffed by the Harvard administration when she tried to do something about her roommate problems, she says she doesn't know what to do.

"I spoke to Dean Griffith, Dean Nathans and Dean Epps, and I'm still living there," the first-year fumes. "They told me that if I didn't like my options [staying in the room or moving to the Co-op] I could just move off campus. They told me I hadn't worked hard enough. I don't know how much work there is for me to do when this girl is fucking her boyfriend in my room," she says. "I know they try really hard to match people up, but you can't just tell someone they can't move. They're going to end up hurting somebody bad sometime. It's not like I'm the voice of Aladdin or anything, but I think my life is important too, even if they don't care about it."

Making the Call

So how can you tell if you're going to get along? Ultimately, you can't. People change. Fights occur. It's all one big crap shoot, and you won't know until you live with someone.

But take heart. consider the story of Joel L. Derfner '95.

"I roomed with this guy, Mike, sophomore and junior year, and we were really good friends," says Derfner. "Then winter reading period came around and he had two or maybe three 20-page papers to write."

"When Mike is under stress, he needs things to be really neat. I am not a neat person. I was trying really hard to keep things neat, but I failed," he winces. "Mike was kind of tense and the last straw was when I left a used tea-bag on his chair. He was really upset and things were just never seemed to swing back into place. We didn't room together this year."

Derfner says the two stopped speaking until he ran into his former roommate's ex-girlfriend later this year.

"I asked her why Mike hated me. She looked surprised and said that if anything, Mike thought I hated him. So when I saw him, I asked him to dinner the next night," Derfner says.

When asked why he thought Mike hated him, Derfner replied: 'The teabag. I've thought you hated me for a year because of the tea bag.'

"He fell out of his chair laughing," Derfner recalls. "That weekend we watched 'Return of the Jedi' together."

Derfner's story serves as testimony that roommates can overcome even the most awkward of moments, the most bitter of disputes, the most moist of teabags. So don't worry. For those rooming groups that fail to bond over Aaron Spelling Productions, there is always the hope of a senior year reconciliation over George Lucas films.