Reading 1

Unit 8- Reading 1

Page 119

Judging Roommates by Their Facebook Covers

Judging Roommates by Their Facebook Covers. Mailbox-watching is supposed to subside for high-school seniors after they receive their acceptance letters and make their college choices. Each summer, however, many an incoming freshman anxiously waits for the mailbox to produce another crucial envelope-the one holding the name of his or her future roommate.

Many people assume that college freshmen pick their dormitory roommates, as upperclassmen are allowed to do. The converse is actually true. Very few colleges allow incoming freshmen any choice in dorm-room assignments. It’s inevitable that students will worry about potential problems with a roommate-a complete stranger.

Students in the so-called millennial generation, in particular, are anxious about sharing a room with another person. Many have never shared a room at home. They are used to their rooms being their exclusive domains.

ROOMMATE RESEARCH

For decades, residential-life offices have received late-summer telephone calls from worried students and parents. “People will read a name and address, and it fits into some category in their head,” says Sarah B.

Westfall, dean of students at Denison University in Ohio. They expect a diverse student body at almost any college, but many students fear diversity as much as they look forward to it. Any indication that a roommate’s life deviates from the familiar can heighten a student’s fear of the unknown. Online social-networking sites now allow students to get more of those indications than ever before.

According to college officials, many incoming freshmen use Facebook, Orkut, QQ, and other social-networking sites, to do research on their future roommates. Since everything happens anonymously, normally passive students can spring into investigative action without having to approach a live person. On sites like these, anyone can post a profile of himself or herself free. Profiles can include photos, quotes, inside jokes, and lists of their favorite bands and TV shows. The idea is to maximize your attractiveness to people with tastes similar to yours. Facebook has more than 750 million registered users, about 70% of whom are outside the United States. Orkut has about 66 million users, mostly in Brazil and India. QQ, in China, is one of the largest social networks in the world, with more than 300 million active accounts.

PREVENTION BEATS INTERVENTION

Such profiles can help strangers break the ice before move-in day, but they can also cause alarm. A student’s fondness for a certain kind of music or room decorations can annoy a roommate before the two even meet. As a result, administrators are spending more time dealing with compatibility issues before students arrive. At some campuses, residential- life counselors have decided it’s easier to prevent roommate problems than to intervene in them later. Their offices have prepared guides to using profiles wisely. They mail these guides out right from the start, in the same envelope as the notice of a roommate’s identity.

Most students mistakenly believe the roommate-assignment system is arbitrary. The school might separate students by gender, they think, but beyond that it’s a matter of chance. Actually, nearly every college prides itself on carefully considering each student’s circumstances when assigning roommates. They don’t guarantee roommates will get along, but they succeed much more often than they fail. They hate to see such careful work undone by a single click of a keyboard—especially since so many profiles are not exactly accurate.

NOT NECESSARILY TRUE

Clauses in the user agreements for social networking sites set some rules for profiles, but nothing in the agreement says they have to be true. Even students who use social-networking sites every day tend to forget that. “For that reason, some schools have instituted “reality training” for social networkers.” “We try to explain to them that there is a lot of posturing that goes on,” one advisor says. “Students are trying to create an image that makes them seem fun and cool, and they post things that may or may not be true about themselves as a result.” Admission officers also have students look at their own online profiles and ask “What kind of roommate do I look like?”

BRANDI AND SARAH

Some students say it’s natural to form instant opinions when surveying their peers’ profiles. Brandi, an incoming freshman at the University of Evansville, in the U.S. state of Indiana, considers herself outgoing and easy to get along with. When she found out who her roommate would be, Brandi went to a social-networking site, where she found Sarah’s profile. Her excitement quickly turned to disappointment.

“Her page was all pink, and I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, we’re not going to get along,’” says Brandi. “It said she was from California and into cheerleading, and I’m more into other sports. She just seemed really girly.” Brandi found hope in Sarah’s profile, however. Both students had listed Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as two of their favorite country-music singers. Sarah had also posted many photographs of herself with friends, who looked like the sort of people in Brandi’s own clique, or group of close friends. This convinced Brandi that her roommate was probably more similar to her than she thought.

So Brandi decided to give her future roommate a chance and sent her a message through the online network. This started a conversation. Two telephone calls later, her first impression had changed. Sarah has two younger siblings, ages 15 and 17, just as Brandi does. And now that Brandi knows that Sarah took a lot of Advanced Placement classes in high school, she no longer pictures her roommate as a lazy or immature student. “I think we’re actually going to be really good friends,” says Brandi.