Learning through living

The night after moving into Hedrick Hall my freshman year I hit my head on the ceiling while squeezing into my bunk. It was also significantly smaller than the queen-sized bed I had enjoyed in my own room back home.

I made an offhand remark about not being able to fit into these new quarters. My roommate, still a complete stranger to me at the time, murmured contentedly how much space he had in comparison to the bed he shared with his five siblings back home.

We quickly discovered that our differences went beyond the socioeconomic. When I was trying to listen to U2, he would crank up the Black Eyed Peas. When I wrote for the Daily Bruin, he got a job at the Student Technology Center. Our paths would never have crossed had UCLA Housing not randomly assigned us to live together.

Every year, thousands of first-year students move into their UCLA dorm rooms, and on a day that is memorable for chaos, good-byes and new beginnings, meeting a roommate is usually the moment that stands out.

Increasingly, though, first-year students are opting to live with previously selected roommates, friends from home or students met through roommate matching sites.

In fact, since 2006, the number of first-year students requesting roommates has increased by 18 percent.

There are a lot of reasons why students may opt to avoid living with a stranger their first year on campus. Some want a friend from home to ease the transition to a brand new place. Maybe family members have shared horror stories of roommates who locked them out of their own rooms for hours on end, didn’t take showers or played loud music when they tried to study.

It’s true: People have bad experiences with their roommates from time to time. But ending up with a “nightmare roommate” is a risk worth taking, because living with someone you already know is passing up a greater learning opportunity than any classroom experience.

Living with a roommate you already know reduces some of the stress of college life. I’m doing it this year.

But you can also reduce the stress of college by not going to class or doing homework. A student’s time at UCLA is meant for learning, and not living with a random roommate during the first year means skipping out on an important lesson.

Living with a random roommate for a year leaves everyone involved better equipped for the real world. There are disagreements because the individuals have different backgrounds. As a result, all parties learn how to express their discomforts, how to compromise and how to find equitable solutions. Being exposed to someone with different interests and activities will also allow freshmen to expand their own horizons.

Often, the difficulties that arise between roommates are opportunities for personal growth. Differing music choices, food preferences and social activities cause strife only if the two parties are unwilling to tolerate each other’s differences, But if roommates are open to new experiences, then these differences can become opportunities for personal growth.

Studies conducted at the Ohio State University, Indiana University and even UCLA also show that random, interracial roommate assignments tend to decrease prejudice levels of the students.

For some schools, the chance to mix students is something the university is unwilling to give up.

At Stanford University, a small student committee spends its summer handpicking each first-year roommate pairing. First-year students don’t even meet their roommates until move-in day.

The University of Michigan asks just one question when pairing roommates: smoking or non-smoking. The rest of the assignment is truly random.

Other schools have swung in the opposite extreme. The University of Arizona, Harvard University, Yale University and Pepperdine University are among the schools that now use Lifetopia, a roommate-matching site that allows roommates to select each other online.

Dana Pysz, the assistant director of the Office of Residential Life, said he believes UCLA’s current process for matching roommates works, and the proof lies in the relatively low number of room change requests ““ less than 100 each year.

As for a switch to a matching site like Lifetopia, Psyz says the move has been considered but so far dismissed.

“The cost for such a system would be passed on to residents,” Psyz said. “And there just hasn’t been a tremendous push (for a third-party matching system).”

This year, my randomly assigned roommate who played his music too loudly and had nothing in common with me is now a handpicked suitemate and a good friend. We now know that deep beneath the surface, we have some things in common: We both think Supreme Court Justice is the coolest job in the world and we secretly watch “Glee.” But these shared interests aren’t ones we would have discovered using roommate finder groups on Facebook.

I understand the motivations of people who want to live with people they already know or that they picked online because they look alike and played the same sport in high school. But they’re missing out on one of the UCLA’s greatest attributes.

At a big, diverse school, it’s easy to meet new people who can expand your horizons. Students shouldn’t go out of their way to limit that part of the UCLA experience.
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Think rooming with strangers is a bad idea? Email Bell at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected]._