Perfect strangers

Making college a success sometimes depends on what major students choose, but where and with whom they live can play as vital a role in their development and involvement on campus.

That's why Jim Settle and the staff of Residence Life at Southeast Missouri State University try to make moving to campus as easy an adjustment as possible for new and transfer students.

"We're upfront about what it's like to live with someone," said Settle, director of residence life.

Sharing a room is intimate. Roommates see everything from your study habits to your housekeeping. Before the semester ends, they'll know whether you snore in your sleep and how loudly.

Asking prospective students to answer some simple questions about their habits -- like whether they are clean or messy, like visitors in the room or prefer quiet when studying -- can keep fights from erupting.

Using those answers, residence life staff try to make the perfect match when pairing students to be roommates.

And when they don't, students can arrange to move during Room Swap Night. This year it was held Sept. 5 and fewer than 50 students showed up to change roommates or room assignments.

But Brian Clark, 20, and T.J. Riddle, 23, didn't need any help selecting their roommates. The two students share many of the same interests, and even have the same major, so sharing living space didn't seem like a stretch.

The two met in the Air Force ROTC program. It was December when they decided to move in together. Over the summer break they decided who would bring what to furnish the room. Clark brought the refrigerator, most of the posters and artwork and Riddle supplied the couch and a chest that serves as the coffee table.

"We have kind of an extravagant room," Clark said. "It's a little more than what's normal."

Their room in the new, yet unnamed dormitory on Henderson, came complete with built-in lofts, and holds two chairs, a couch, entertainment center, TV, stereo system, video games and refrigerator. Army netting hangs on the ceiling near the door. Military flags and inspirational posters hang on the walls. Both beds are outfitted with camouflage comforters.

"We've made it pretty comfortable," said Riddle. "But it's got a lot of stuff in it."

Learning to live with another person and all their stuff can be a big change for students who are used to having their own room at home.

Clark had two roommates last semester; Riddle lived alone in an apartment off campus.

Sharing their space wasn't a tough adjustment for either, they said, particularly since they spent much of their summer in field training with the ROTC.

But even students who aren't used to sharing their private space adapt quickly. One girl living in Dearmont was upset on her first day on campus because she thought her roommate wasn't going to show up and she so wanted a roommate. "It doesn't take them long to see the benefits of community living," said Sarah Bauer, a community advisor living in Dearmont.

Community dorms are those where most rooms share bathroom facilities and common areas, like lounges and TV rooms. Most of the freshmen living on campus live in community dorms, partly because they tend to do better academically and socially in those settings, Settle said.

Ryan Burnett, another community advisor, lived in a suite last year but still made a lot of friends on his floor. Now he's trying to build those friendships with the students living on his floor at Towers East.

"We watched TV together and piled into the lounge," he said.

Football games and movie nights help build friendships, but also provide students a chance to get a break from their roommates, the dorm advisors said.

Roommates who made contacts over the summer get a head start on decorating and building lofts. Community advisor Tara Toellner said one room on her floor in Towers looks like a New York studio apartment because the girls took such care with decorating.

"It feels like home," she said.

And that's exactly what the advisors want students to experience. Living in a dorm is like living with a large family. Everybody has to learn to give and take.

But the roommates who talked over the summer seem more readily able to compromise once problems arise, said Bauer.

"There are rough spots now and then," Burnett said. But talking about the problems early on can keep them from snowballing into something more.

"And you can build the skills you need" to make it at a job or in the future, Bauer said.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126