For college freshman, Facebook is ultimate roommate matchmaker

For generations, one of the first challenges of going off to
college was meeting the stranger the school chose to be your
roommate. Today, a growing number of students are bypassing that
tradition and making the choice themselves through online social
networking.

Over the next several weeks, many freshmen will arrive at
dormitories to move in with roommates they already know, even if
they have never met or talked on the phone.

“Realistically, even the most personal roommate-matching service
can’t match Facebook,” said Adam Gang, 18, of Colorado, who will be
a freshman at American University in Washington, D.C. “You’re an
accepted friend request away from knowing someone.”

Some college officials say that choosing roommates for students
helps ensure they are exposed to different points of view. They
worry that incoming freshmen would tend to pick people of the same
race, social background or home town.

But AU, recognizing that students want a voice in the matter,
has come up with a way to help them.

Earlier this year, Gang filled out a short questionnaire: Do you
maintain normal sleeping hours? (Yes.) How social are you?
(Somewhat.) Sleep style? (Heavy.)

Rather than pairing Gang with a roommate, the AU housing office
sent him a short list of potential matches based on his replies. He
went to Facebook and hit it off with James Quigley, 18, of New
York. Both students plan to study international relations and love
playing sports. They requested to live together and will meet for
the first time on move-in day this month.

“Me and Adam are pretty similar,” Quigley said. “I feel like you
need to know more about a person if you’re going to live with
them.”

As more freshmen go online in a quest to shape their living
situation, college officials are split on whether that is a good
idea.

A few schools are embracing the movement. Many others have no
formal policies on the use of social networking to choose roommates
but will offer guidance (encouraging or discouraging) to students
who call to inquire.

At the University of Virginia, the number of requests for
first-year roommates has more than doubled in five years. Last
year, according to U-Va. acting housing director Patricia Romer,
students were told that it may not be possible to honor all
requests.

Giving freshmen more say in their living arrangements can result
in fewer roommate conflicts, some college housing officials say.
They add that students are more likely to be honest in a one-on-one
chat with a fellow teenager than on a form their parents might see.
Living with a stranger is always a risk, but allowing students to
pick that stranger builds an investment in wanting to make things
work.

But other officials worry that students are focusing on the
wrong qualities in these searches — music bands instead of
cleaning habits, funny prom stories instead of rules for overnight
guests.

The self-matching process for the Class of 2015 started as early
as January, when students admitted via early admission began to
form Facebook groups. Many of these pages resembled online dating
sites, as students queried each other about personality quirks,
favorite sitcoms and drinking habits.

“It came down to even, ‘What colors do you like in your room?’ ”
said Julie Bogen, 19, from Connecticut, a sophomore at Wheaton
College in Massachusetts who found her first-year roommate (now a
close friend) on Facebook.

When Melanie Blair searched for her first roommate at the
University of Southern California a few years ago, a few girls she
contacted wanted to know her jean size.

“Some girls want a roommate who is the same size and has the
same shoe size. That way they can share clothes,” said Blair, 21,
from Chicago, who will be a senior this fall. Once, she said, a
prospective roommate turned her down because of a size
conflict.

Last year, AU launched the matching system that Gang and Quigley
used. First, students complete a survey on basic living
preferences. Then they receive a list of possible matches and are
encouraged to bond via an internal networking site or email –
although most students connect on Facebook, said Chris Moody, AU’s
executive director of housing and dining program.

“We don’t encourage it,” he said, “but they do it.”

Once roommates request one another, they can pick a dorm room
with an online floor plan, just like booking an airplane seat. In
the program’s first year, Moody said, residence hall assistants
dealt with fewer roommate conflicts and requests for room
changes.

Social networking has played a major role in collegiate housing
for years. On many campuses, it started with phone calls from
parents who found profiles of their children’s roommates online and
were troubled by what they saw.

“They would call and say, ‘We’ve seen X on their MySpace page.
We just don’t think they are going to be a good match,’ ” said Paul
Lynch, director of campus and residential services at Marymount
University in Virginia. (He never honored such requests.)

As high school students gained access to Facebook, they began to
network with future classmates.

Last year on a George Washington University Class of 2014 page,
some incoming freshmen posted introductory videos of themselves.
This summer at the College of William and Mary, freshmen who will
live in Dupont Hall have an active Facebook page where they
announced room assignments, found neighbors (“Room 108! who is in
110!? and 106?”) and posted questions for RAs (“Does anyone know
exactly what the rooms come with, furniture-wise?”).

At many schools, move-in day is beginning to feel more like a
class reunion. Several housing officials said they weren’t
surprised when students made friends online and decided, “Hey, we
should room together.”

Many students say they worry that the wrong roommate could ruin
everything.

“I will be honest: There are some psychos. And I don’t want to
live with them,” said Amelia Simpson, 19, a Boston University
sophomore from Springfield, Va. “You don’t want to be with someone
who is slacking all of the time or complaining all of the
time.”

Simpson found a roommate on Facebook last summer. The two
requested each other and split the cost of a mini-fridge and
printer. On “selection day,” they learned they had been assigned to
a quad room with two more roommates, total strangers, chosen by
who-knows-who in the housing office.

“We weren’t even aware there were rooms with four people,”
Simpson said. “It ended up being the right mix. … We were the
only room without drama.”

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