Until recently, incoming students arrived at their college dorm rooms to find a perfect stranger waiting to share his or her space. But today, more colleges let incoming students take advantage of internet speed to find an ideal roommate, says the New York Times.
In some ways, social networking sites like Facebook have pressured colleges to relinquish control of the roommate process to their dormers. In the past few years, housing officers have been besieged by complaints from students and parents who looked up assigned roommates on the Internet and did not like what they saw, whether it was goth makeup or beer cans in the background.
While many colleges still insist on pairing roommates themselves, either randomly or carefully, a growing number are turning the choice over to students. Some universities have contracted with matchmaking companies like Lifetopia and RoomBug, which offer secure Web-based services. Others are acceding to a wave of roommate requests from students who use unrestricted sites like URoomSurf, and others have created Facebook pages to help students share information.
Matches made on URoomSurf.com do for dormitory life what eHarmony and Match.com have long done for romance. Each fills out a questionnaire covering study habits, overnight guests, tidiness, politics, sexual orientation and religion, among other topics, then received a list of other soon-to-be freshmen who had registered on the site, ranked by compatibility.
Housing officials say that “roommate self-selection,” as the process is known, empowers students while cutting down on irksome appeals to switch later on. But some worry that it robs young adults of an increasingly rare opportunity for growth: exposure to someone with different experiences and opinions. But isn’t going away to college stressful enough without finding yourself sharing space with someone wholly incompatible?
Tags: Internet Speed