Thursday, August 16, 2007

I'm Not Surprised.....

So I ran across this article today at work.

Is anyone really surprised that schools are getting more requests for roommate changes now that sites like Facebook and MySpace are so prevalent? When I was a freshman, we didn't have Facebook and not many people were on MySpace, at least no one that I really knew. However these days, everyone and their mothers seem to be on one or both of these sites.

So do you think it is right that people are using these sites to pretty much "pre-screen" their potential roommates before they even meet them? Lets say Chuck checks his future roommate's profile and he finds out that he is a party animal, or Democrat, or Muslim, or Gay. Or maybe he runs across something else on there just irks him to the core.....should he be able to go to the school and request a room change? I mean personally, I would hate to have someone judge me from my profile because I really don't think it is that indicative of my whole persona. On the other hand I can totally understand why someone would want to use all the necessary tools to scoop out and do some research on their potential roommate. Shit, I would do it right now.....I have no shame! HAHA.

But in all honesty, it really does make you think twice about what you put up on your profile for people to see. I am also glad that I don't work in a Housing department of some University. I would imagine that it would have to be one of the most demanding jobs of life.....from a customer service perspective.

3 comments:

Steve said...

Oh my God, Chuck is a gay Muslim Democrat...I had no idea...

This sounds like seriously bad news...I mean I'll admit, I judged people the moment I met them moving into Rez, but it's just not right to be that judgmental without even meeting the person first! I understand that people don't like to be pushed outside their 'normal' space, but isn't that at least (a small) part of going to college?

And what will this mean for school dorms? Will they have an all Frat floor, an all geek floor, an all Baptist floor and an all gay floor? Hrm...on second thought, I might go in for the all gay floor...

Queen of Arts said...

seems like...when i lived in a dorm (100 years ago ... or 7)...one of the main objectives of the housing office was to group people based commonalities AND differences so they would learn to reach out of their comfort zone. interesting.

Mike said...

When you enter college, you want to present yourself as a fun person who knows everyone, party animal, big stuff, not so much who you really are, so I can seee where the dilemma lies.

I admit, I would have no shame in checking out who my roommate is beforehand, but unless there was a huge red flag (I can handle the Republican thing).