Two girls who went into the housing process blind and became roommates turned into close friends as the year passed. Hospitality business freshman Alexandra Risher and education freshman Lydia Macklin-Camel spend the day together and comment on their experiences.
For accounting sophomore Brian Perry, going in blind has had its ups and downs.
Perry, a transfer student from Central Michigan University, said in his freshman year at CMU, he met some of his best friends after filling out a roommate matching survey and getting placed with three other freshmen.
He said they got along well, but his habits changed because of the people he lived with, and that wasn’t necessarily beneficial for his college career.
“They went to bed at 5 a.m., and because of that, it made me fit more into their patterns and it negatively affected me,” Perry said.
Although he roomed with a student he knew from high school when he arrived at MSU, Perry said he thought a more extensive process for matching roommates would be beneficial for all incoming freshman.
And for students such as Perry, a new program implemented at MSU this fall could help him — and other students going in blind — to have a little foresight.
Changing tides
In response to student interest of improving the roommate matching system, university officials recently worked on a way to match students better.
Director of Campus Living Services Sherri Margaves said the process of blind roommate matching at MSU currently consists of a brief questionnaire for students to fill out, indicating their study habits, typical bedtime, smoking preferences and other criteria.
Margaves said the current plan for the university is to implement RoomBug, a Facebook application designed to allow students to choose their own roommates based on slightly more detailed compatibility questions.
“(With the application), the university doesn’t do the matching — it’s actually the students themselves,” she said. “It’s just another tool to have more people get a little more input into that process.”
Margaves said the program likely would be in place by September 2011 if preliminary tests of the application scheduled to be held during the summer go smoothly.
“This is a service toward the students — it’s something the students have asked for for a couple years,” Margaves said.
For testing, MSU officials plan to do trial runs during the summer and input data from those trials to see whether or not it was successful.
Included in the trials will be a five-question survey offered to students. Margaves said administrators have run the idea past several students, including student workers in Campus Living Services and the Residence Hall Association.
She said once officials see if the program works well and links up correctly with the data inputted, they will consider using the program in the future.
Reaching results
The RoomBug application already has been implemented at the University of Florida with positive feedback, said T.J. Logan, associate director of housing for administrative services at the University of Florida.
For fall 2011, more than 2,700 students of an incoming class of about 5,000 use the program, Logan said. He said students have used the application not only to search for a potential roommate, but to find potential friends based on similar interests and lifestyles.
Logan said the program is unique and integrates students of this generation better than the system they had in the past and gives them more opportunities to make their college experience what they want it to be.
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“We think we’re now starting to fulfill a student need a little better than we ever have,” Logan said.
A mixed bag
In the eyes of some students, the process of going in blind while picking a roommate can work just as well as choosing a roommate beforehand or having a detailed personality profile.
This was the case for hospitality business freshman Alexandra Risher, who said she first met her roommate, education freshman Lydia Macklin-Camel, the day she moved in and since has become close friends with her.
“We pretty much do everything together — we’re basically sisters,” Risher said.
Risher said the process doesn’t work necessarily in every roommate situation but said she was glad she had the opportunity to meet someone new.
Personality profiling
At Calvin College, university officials have taken the roommate matching process a step further by implementing a survey program with basic roommate questions along with inquiries about music tastes, interests, activities and other aspects of the applicant’s personality, said Emily Nagy, Calvin College’s housing assistant.
Nagy said each of the surveys are checked by hand to ensure optimal roommate matching and accommodation for needs of students that might not be recognized by a computer.
“We’re actually taking in not just their age or gender — we really care about what they’re looking for,” Nagy said.
The process might work at Calvin because of the smaller size of the incoming freshman classes, but it’s possible the process could work in the context of a larger campus if more staff were available, she said.
Different strokes
Many Michigan colleges implement similar roommate matching processes to that of MSU’s current program, including Grand Valley State University, or GVSU, Director of Housing and Resident Life
at GVSU Andy Beachnau said.
Beachnau said he doesn’t see many problems with the roommate matching policy for people going in blind at GVSU because of the nature of many incoming students but said opportunities for betterment in the process are commendable.
“Sometimes you’re nicer to a stranger than a best friend,” Beachnau said.
“(However), I do think MSU is going in the right direction by trying to enhance or approve matching — if you’ve ever had a bad roommate, you applaud the universities for trying to do that.”
Alese Garstick, an exercise science freshman at GVSU, said she and the roommate she received after going in blind get along well enough but said their schedules don’t mesh well and the two have different personalities.
She said her college experience wasn’t affected negatively by their differences, but they both might have benefited from a more extensive roommate matching survey and a roommate who better matched their habits.
“Coming in, we were pretty similar, but after going into college, our schedules and lifestyles changed,” Garstick said.
Perry said he thought it was possible for students to meet great people and get along with roommates even with the most basic survey, but said good friends and good roommates weren’t necessarily the same thing.
“People can be completely different in those surveys and still be good friends, but as far as being a good roommate, the survey (would help) a lot,” Perry said.
