Having a random roommate not only teaches students how to cooperatively live with someone else, it can also tremendously increase your social circle.
As I mentioned in last week’s Campus Chatter, I didn’t begin college at Ohio University — I originally started my collegiate journey at Fordham University in the heart of Manhattan.
Coming from a state where nearly everyone I know becomes a Bobcat, Bearcat, Buckeye, Flyer or RedHawk, I knew that when I made my college decision, choosing Fordham meant I would be going away to school alone.
The summer before college started, reality quickly set in that I soon would find myself on a campus where I didn’t know a single person. I desperately needed an easy way to make new friends.
As I received notifications about the housing process, I decided that living in a single dorm room freshman year wasn’t a smart move. A double or triple was the way to go.
But who to live with?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of roommate horror stories that scare incoming freshmen from going random. Instead of taking a risk when it comes to their roomie, freshmen catch themselves scrambling to find someone from their hometown who is going off to the same school so they can room with someone — anyone! — they are semi-familiar with.
But as Jesse Singal writes in his article “In Praise of the Rando Freshman Roommate,” for New York Magazine, going random “shouldn’t be avoided, but rather sought out.”
Having a random roommate not only teaches students how to cooperatively live with someone else, it can also tremendously increase your social circle.
Think about it: When you and your roommate become friends, you become friends with their friends. And then their friends’ roommates. And then their friends’ roommates’ friends.
And if your rando roommate happens to be a different race, you just increased your frequency of interaction with students of other races by a factor of three, according to a 2005 friendship study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
However, I do realize some students aren’t so lucky. I have friends who went random but the pairing was a complete failure. They had nothing in common with their roommates, which led to arguments and, yes, even brief moments of insanity.
Yet I have to wonder: aren’t all the potential positives that can come with going random worth the risk? If worse comes to worse, students always have the option of switching rooms.
Carly Sherer, a senior at OU, says she still has moments of regret over her decision to live in a single her freshman year.
“I enjoyed having my own space but I’m disappointed I didn’t take the opportunity to meet new people,” Sherer said. “My closest friends at OU are kids I went to high school with. I never truly got out of my comfort zone.”
Hearing such doubts makes me appreciate that I went to a school over eight hours away and was forced to live with a complete stranger.
A stranger who ended up becoming my best friend.
Even after I transferred to OU last spring, we maintained our friendship despite the distance. I was even able to explore a new part of the country this summer when I visited her at her home in Texas.
Had I not gone random my freshman year, I would have missed out on an amazing experience and, most importantly, an irreplaceable friendship.
Maria Fischer is a junior studying journalism. What was your experience with a random roommate? Email her at mf628211@ohio.edu.
