A horrible sitcom is waiting to happen. I can already hear the theme song.

Surely there'd have to be some way to let the objecting roommate move to another room -- isn't student housing supposed to mediate that kind of conflict?

1: " Two and a Quarter's Company."

Twist: the toddler ... is a superhero.

From the future.

You can PayPal me my share of the gross.

Come on, people! Fight! This is the same as not wanting a black roommate!

(I'm pretty sure I read a whole story about Michelle Obama's first college roommate. She was from the South somewhere, and when her parents saw who her roomie was they made the university switch her. Then she came out as a lesbian. Something like that.)

Are you saying black people are children?

I think she's saying that Michelle Obama flipped her room-mate almost immediately.

Moby is a person with racism.

5: I do think her public list of reasons for not wanting a child staying with them (what's to keep the child from drinking her wine? the same thing that keeps any child from drinking wine in their parent's house) is pretty silly as stated, but I am otherwise sympathetic to all parties.

9: Her letter is pretty awful: "I am paying for her life choices!!!" But I would not have reacted well to having a toddler roommate when I was 20 either.

(what's to keep the child from drinking her wine? the same thing that keeps any child from drinking wine in their parent's house)

A reprogrammed Roomba with a low-power TASER attached?

Sent back to foil NYU in its quest to take over all of lower Manhattan. Steve Carell plays the evil but incompetent expansion-minded college administrator* who the toddler always outsmarts. Wacky hijinks ensue.

* Modeled on Captain Wallace B. Binghamton "Old Lead Bottom" from McHale's Navy.

12 -> 4

Do "roommates" in American universities actually sleep in the same room? Because if so this would be completely unacceptable. At a pinch you can go and study in a library, but being woken at all hours by "Mummy, I want a drink of water!" - there isn't a jury on earth that would convict you of murder.

Quite apart from other considerations.

12: "Are you Dean Sarah Connor?"

re: 14

I believe they do, yes. There was one hall of residence (out of many) in Glasgow that did the same. I always thought it was bizarre and couldn't really get why anyone would live there.

I am deeply unsympathetic.

The toddler does not live with them. The toddler visits, according to the visitation policy.

Would she have the same reaction if it were her roommate's developmentally challenged brother, who stayed over just as frequently and who had the capacities of a 4 year old? Would she get the same sympathy?

The fact that most 20 year olds are shits, and most people can remember themselves being 20-year-old shits, doesn't mean they should get sympathy for that fact.

Sharing rooms at university is bad, and having a policy where you're allowed to have regular, long-term (ie not overnight) guests in your shared room as well is even worse. I'd give the roommate the same sympathy if it was any kind of inherently disruptive guest staying in her bedroom for a week at a time every month against her will; four year old, disabled brother, permanently drunk boyfriend, whatever.

My first reaction: dorm rooms are barely big enough for the two people assigned to them, much less an unofficial third.

My second reaction, arguing with myself: Is the toddler actually any more annoying than when the unofficial third is your roommate's idiot boyfriend? (And which is more likely to drink your wine?)

17

Would she have the same reaction if it were her roommate's developmentally challenged brother, who stayed over just as frequently and who had the capacities of a 4 year old? Would she get the same sympathy?

She would get more sympathy from me. At least a 4 year isn't likely to sexually assault her.

NYU needs 24-hour lecturing schedules. Then the students could organise themselves into Blue Watch and Gold Watch, like SSBN crews, and hot-bunk. Everyone gets a room to themselves! With a spare bed!

19.2: I would have taken a toddler over my roommate's boyfriend. But maybe that was because when I was 17 I got along better with toddlers than men my own age.

Hopefully the roommate still nurses the 4 year old, who defiantly wears camo and boots in an effort to look like an 8 year old, while suckling.

22: I still get along better with toddlers than with men my own age. Though I've grown to see that, in many cases, there's not a lot of difference.

*rimshot*

Just hang a towel on the doorknob when you're singing the four year old to sleep, that way your roommate knows to hang out in the TV room. Easy peasy. And you can easily train a four year old to carry your empties to the recycling and clean out the bong. Sounds like a good deal for everyone.

[6 nights/mo visitation in a dorm room is a pretty weird custody schedule for a four year old, but who am I to judge.]

Maybe the kid's with grandparents or something the rest of the time? The six nights a month limit is set by the university, not by a divorce settlement..

MY roommates junior year included a 45 year old ex Microsoft millionaire who slept with me, a super angry and anal British airline stewardess, and a sullen Turkish geologist. That same year also featured a current Crooked Timber poster participating in an "intervention" for me after I'd passed out in a mutual friend's kitchen one too many times. All true! Though not on a typical US college campus.

Having actually clicked through the link, 19.2 definitely trumps 19.1. The kid can sleep over 6 nights a month and visit every day *just like any other visitor either roommate chooses to invite over.* The entire "issue" boils down to nothing more than rank anti-child bigotry. "But who will be responsible if the child slips in the tub or drinks cleaning products?" Her mom, duh. (Or NYU if the tub was unreasonably dangerous, I suppose.)

Now that's what I call a sitcom setup.

This Thursday at 9, Robert and Cherie are on the outs after Robert drunkenly accused Microsoft of copying the look and feel of the Windows interface from Apple. Meanwhile, Hannah is furious with Cenk after she finds a coprolith in her roll-on luggage.

But you can also seek recourse with an RA if your roommate's boyfriend is more annoying than a small child. If he's regularly waking you up at all hours and disrupting studying, Student Housing is happy to intervene and address the situation.

31: Do we have any reason to believe this isn't equally true as applied to a 4 year old?

Is it an idiosyncratic U.S-American thing that 2 college students share a room in college dormitories?

It's definitely becoming less and less common. At Heebie U, old dorms are 2-to-a-room, and new dorms are quad style, where each roommate gets a private pod, and all four share a common living area. Which seems like a vast improvement.

Do "roommates" in American universities actually sleep in the same room?

Sometimes but not always.

And is also what everyone here recommended we do for our addition, which we totally rejected and I don't regret it even though I admire the positive aspects of the pod-and-common-room set-up.

I think having a four year old around from time to time would have made my college experience just that little bit more awesome. Four year olds are great for just hanging out and chilling with, they don't fall for or give you bullshit , and they go to sleep at an hour that leaves plenty of time for studying. Having a little kid around would not have cramped my style at all, as long as mom was cool with her kid being around someone who's baked like a pizza on a semi regular basis. The occasional tantrum or other disruption would not be more stressful than asshole dormies playing shit music at excruciating volumes at all hours of the night.

The occasional tantrum or other disruption would not be more stressful than asshole dormies playing shit music at excruciating volumes at all hours of the night.

To this day, I loathe the Doors because of a roommate's after-class ritual listening habit. At least it wasn't at night.

re: 33

It's pretty unusual in the UK. As I said above, there was one building at Glasgow that (early 90s) was largely shared rooms, and one that had a small number of shared rooms among lots of singles. But those were unusual, and (I believe) in the process of being replaced.* I'd guess 95% or more of the rooms available weren't shared.

* quick google and a look at their website, all rooms are single-occupancy now.

39 But dude, you've really gotta listen to An American Prayer.

This probably shows the same character flaws as how I felt about the slacker girlfriend houseguest, but I'd say the problem is NYU's overnight guest policy. For a shared room, the policy should be no overnight guests ever. I wouldn't enforce it unless the roommate complained -- two roommates who agreed to waive the rule for each other would be fine. But a student shouldn't have to accept random third people sleeping in their room if they don't want to, child or adult.

Oh the endless wrongness. It isn't even entirely about the roommate, though of course if I were her, I'd be writing bratty letters too. It's that college dorms are supposed to be places where all the protections of childhood are gone or at least extremely lax. IANAP, but I assume kids are not supposed to witness/be around everything I think is integral to the experience of living in a dorm. (Maybe this is because I lived in a co-op and because I never did anything disreputable before I was 18.)

Do we have any reason to believe this isn't equally true as applied to a 4 year old?

Yes of COURSE we do, because the response to anything like that is always "oh come on, he's a kid."

42: absolutely. You should not have to share your bedroom with anyone you don't want to!

I think I maybe need to check out of this thread in which I run a high risk of becoming a parody of myself.

43: or, indeed, "the entire "issue" boils down to nothing more than rank anti-child bigotry."

I agree with 42. I'd personally be OK with an exception for a kid, but it ought not be SOP that random strangers can sleep over without my veto, especially if it's a shared room.

Well, yes. The rule that makes sense to me is no objected-to guests at all. And the letter was bratty. But I agree that the reason a kid set her off where a boyfriend wouldn't have is the feeling that she has to be on reasonably good behavior with a kid around, where she wouldn't have to be with an adult guest, and finding that to be an imposition.

And this isn't totally about wanting to be drunk, naked and strewing the room with broken glass, or whatever people do in dorms. An adult who's annoying you, you can negotiate with or get hostile with. A kid who's not yours, your options are much more limited.

48 to 42, and agreeing with it.

Dorms ain't the kind of place to raise a kid.

And this isn't totally about wanting to be drunk, naked and strewing the room with broken glass

I knew my college experience had been missing something.

(I lived in a co-op two years, and an off-campus apartment one year, and my one year in a dorm was in a dorm that had been set up by the U of C a mile or so away from campus for transfer students, and was very sedate. So I'm not clear on the full dorm experience.)

A kid who's not yours, your options are much more limited.

I'm pretty sure you can lock them away or treat them as unpaid domestic help.

43: IAAP and I agree entirely. For better or worse, in the US the "go off to college and live in the dorms" experience is about a lot more than having a place to sleep and study. The letter is bratty, poorly articulated and argued, but I get not wanting to feel responsible for a toddler. And, blort, sure, "the mother is responsible," but guess what? all but monsters are actually going to feel responsible for the children in their presence getting into unsafe things, being woken up from their naps, hearing profanity (maybe), etc. Not so with some rando boyfriend, whom you can tell to shut the fuck, whose naps you can utterly disregard, and whom you can tell to GTFO when they are too much. As I read it, and it's unclear, the child is around most of every day, and sleeps over most of each weekend?

54: The numbering was right once I swear! 54 to 42. And pwnd by LB, more or less. And smearcase in the new 43.

I seem to have been bolloxed by numbering issues, too. I was agreeing with LB, 47 -> 41.

But a student shouldn't have to accept random third people sleeping in their room if they don't want to, child or adult.

But of course, we're already crossed that line, with the assigned roommates.

IANAP, but I assume kids are not supposed to witness/be around everything I think is integral to the experience of living in a dorm.

Every parent is different about what they don't want their kid exposed to. If stuff is going on in the dorm the mom doesn't want the kid exposed to, the mom shouldn't bring the kid there. It's not up to the roommate to worry about how to properly parent.

43, 46: What evidence is there that this 4-year old has woken anyone at odd hours or disrupted studying? The sole complaint is that he's 4. And, seriously, is "come on, he's just a kid" really more predictable than "come on, it's college"? The latter being what I expect is the typical response to loud music past an hour a given roommate might consider late or to assorted drunken stupidity.

I haven't seen an argument against the kid being there yet that isn't either concern trolling how to be a good parent or worrying about potential disturbances based on presumptions about 4-year olds without any actual evidence that *this* 4-year old is anything but a perfect angel.

(Ultimately, of course, I share the character flaws of 41 and think shared rooms are a terrible idea, even though I actually had pretty awesome roommates myself.)

Dorms are a very uniquely weird situation.

My intended distinction there was 'random'. The deal you made with the school was one person, also a student at the same school. Not ideal, but much more tolerable than 'that one person and anyone else they've ever met.'

60 to 57.

To 58, what about the argument that even if the kid's an angel, norms of behavior around kids are significantly different than norms of behavior around college students, and the complaining roommate isn't unreasonable to object to having the child-friendly norms imposed on her.

This does seem vastly different than the "Hey, there's children in my restaurant!" complaint.

Hey, you got your child in my dormroom! Hey, you got your dormroom in my child! Let's call the whole thing off.

Look, obviously the problem here is NYU, which clearly doesn't have adequate housing for single undergrad parents. Presumably because they mostly cater to obnoxious rich kids. It's especially a problem at a place like NYU, where presumably there's no off campus or alternate housing to be had for anything under a trillion dollars.

This woman should certainly have a single. Comped, even! But we don't even know NYU knew about her custody situation before the roommate complained. (Lots of students live off campus. Because lots and lots of students at NYU are really fucking rich and share last names with museums and subway stops, etc.)

64 gets it right. NYU needs to be moved to Staten Island.

I'm thinking it couldn't have been any worse if my roommate had a 4-year old around sometimes. Maybe the little kid would have been my friend.

But we don't even know NYU knew about her custody situation before the roommate complained.

This is kind of likely, in fact.

I endorse 66

I honestly don't see anyone concern trolling "how to be a good parent."

Because lots and lots of students at NYU are really fucking rich and share last names with museums and subway stops

"Henry 14th Street? Of the 14th Street 14th Streets?"

71: The *Newport* 14th Streets.

Alive with flavor?

What evidence is there that this 4-year old has woken anyone at odd hours or disrupted studying?

There is no evidence. That is the hypothetical to which you were responding.

And, seriously, is "come on, he's just a kid" really more predictable than "come on, it's college"?

I don't know if it's more predictable, but while I imagine there is someone out there who goes to college with the idea of spending more time around toddlers, I am quite sure that a larger percentage go to college to go to college. Children are not the default consideration in all contexts.

Fine, I'm a parody of myself now. There goes that crazy Smearcase, bloody remains of a child dripping from his razor-like teeth as usual. Somebody please think of something clever to replace my comments with, please. It is my last wish.

I would just like to note how shitty I find 20 to be.

Carry on.

70: There was a bunch of that in the comments at the link, although not here.

20 is phenomenally shitty. I hadn't even exactly read what he was saying.

Non-rich NYU students could presumably live off campus in the Bronx, say, and take the IRT down to the Village, as long as no-one tried to take a shit while hanging between the cars.

Let's see if I'm still banned not from a computer.

Ok, good, not banned, only banned on my phone.

Hey all, if you find yourself unexpectedly banned, email one of us.

I barely skimmed the thread but holy wow, 20, wtf?

I think my approach to college was fairly typical in that if my roommate turned out to have a 4-year-old kid that he liked to have around in the room all the time, my response would be "My college experience is now ruined, by a situation I could never have possibly imagined".

Endorsing 61 and 74, with the possible exception of 74.last.

Fuck off to 20 and to JBS generally.

Speaking of obnoxious rich kids and surnames, in my general pop culture cluelessness, I had not realised until the other day that Richard Branson's son had renamed himself Edward Rocknroll.

85: Richard Branson's nephew (not son) and,now, Kate Winslett's husband.

I know of multiple parents (none of them well) who have allegedly given their kids the middle name Danger. I think that's the parenting equivalent of a tribal tattoo.

Also, his given name was "Noddy" so it's hard to blame him that much.

I always wondered that about the Peter Wimsey novels -- even in the any-weird-names-are-excused-as-having-been-handed-down-in-the-family-since-the-eleventh-century milieu, doesn't giving your kid the middle name 'Death', regardless of pronunciation, make you a bit of a twerp?

88: Yes, but the illustrious Noddy Bodkin! And um Noddy of the Toyland Noddies.

Mostly to 58: I was prepared to offer, instead of an argument about disturbances or being a good parent or disturbances, an argument about whether the single parent was being a good roommate - but then I clicked the OP's link, and I don't think I can make that stand up.

I had thought from allusions here that visits from the 4-year-old were ongoing, and the mother was relying on the letter of the guest policy to impose on her roommate, but looking at the letter I think - agreeing with 58 - that we not only don't know whether this 4-year old has woken anyone at odd hours or disrupted studying, we don't know if the child has come over for any significant time. Many of the letter-writer's references are to things that "could" happen under the guest policy.

So in lieu of the imposition I imagined, I see testimony that the parenting roommate is seeking the letter-writer's permission - literally seeking a signed permission slip - and citing the guest policy as part of the negotiation; the letter-writer has appealed to the university and the court of public opinion to ratify her refusal.

Now, I'd say that refusal to sign off on the most extreme scenarios allowed by the letter of the law is reasonable - and the tone of her publicity campaign aside, appealing to and pressuring the relevant authorities is also reasonable - but my sense is that the parent isn't behaving too badly either. She has a transgressive request - it does take some chutzpah to ask to bring a 4-year-old into a dorm for a week - but I think there's room to believe she's responsibly pursuing a negotiated solution (and that NYU is trying to defer to a related norm whereby all roommates resolve their differences themselves).

TL;DR : I think what exists now is a stalemate, not a situation where the 4-year-old is already present, and that both roommates have a case.

87: It sounds like a trick against the evil eye. Parents spends so much time trying to keep their kids out of danger, maybe giving that exact middle name is a magical way to inoculate them.

If I recall correctly, there was a faculty advisor in my freshman dorm with some sort of child, old enough to walk and talk. But we weren't roommates or anything and I don't think it stopped anyone from pretending to be drunker than they were in the commons room or yelling profanities during ping pong.

89: Is twerpiness a bad thing in aristocratic families?

61: What if the roommate comes from a conservative religious background which would make her uncomfortable with the norms of behavior to which you refer? Either you accommodate that preference or you don't. Me personally, I would be accommodating because I'm a fun-hater anyway. Others wouldn't on the "come on, it's college" principle. Being a grown up means you figure out how to negotiate that between you and your roommate, or you ask for a new room if you can't.

My friends and their three young children live in a dorm. But they've got their own apartment.

I see testimony that the parenting roommate is seeking the letter-writer's permission - literally seeking a signed permission slip - and citing the guest policy as part of the negotiation; the letter-writer has appealed to the university and the court of public opinion to ratify her refusal.

I don't think that's right. I read it as saying that the policy allows six overnights a month, but only three in a row, and the permission slip was to allow all six overnights to be spent in a row. So the parent was up against the limits of the policy and seeking to slightly exceed them.

I don't think the parent's necessarily doing wrong -- if the rules allow what she's doing, and she's trying not to be obnoxious about it, I can't blame her. But the rules as they exist are hard on the roommate, and I don't blame the roommate for objecting.

87: Ayup.

88: Yes, but the illustrious Noddy Bodkin! And um Noddy of the Toyland Noddies.

Noddy Holder is a famous 60s/70s rock star in the UK. I suspect Slade didn't really cross the pond though.

89: Death is a bona fide English surname. See the splendidly named Steve Death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Death
If you're a bit more aristo, you spell it De'Ath.

Like these chaps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_de%27Ath
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Death

95: At my college, they asked about that sort of thing on a questionnaire, and if those sorts of problems arose post-placement (like an evangelical roommate paired with a terrible libertine) the school switched you.

Right -- you expect the school to do a certain amount of sorting for compatibility. There are probably roommates who wouldn't have minded the four-year-old around at all; I don't know that I would have myself, although I'm not sure.

97: the policy allows six overnights a month, but only three in a row, and the permission slip was to allow all six overnights to be spent in a row

Looking again, this looks correct. But it still looks to me as though the child has yet to stay over - all the references are to "could" and "allowed to" - and both roommates have sought to make the rules explicit in advance.

(Even though they've probably reached a point where their failure to communicate/compromise is total enough that the university should do more than appeal to them to keep trying - mediation and/or a housing-based solution is called for.)

You don't get much more aristo than Lord Peter, unless you're his brother the 16th Duke of Denver (wut?), and ISTR that he pronounced it to rhyme with breath.

101: The summer after I graduated, I was the matcher in my college's Housing Office. Our questionnaire was pretty bare-bones; I think the only behavioral questions were about smoking, noise, and sleep habits.

(To my amusement, it also asked about height, because the fourth-floor doubles in one building had sharply sloping ceilings.)

On death and pain.

I think Gswift is my only co-Lovelines Archives kindred spirit here, but I always thought it was funny when Adam Carolla called Drew's boarding school "Little Lord Fauntleroy's Prep School For Albino Hemophilliacs".

At my college, they asked about that sort of thing on a questionnaire, and if those sorts of problems arose post-placement (like an evangelical roommate paired with a terrible libertine) the school switched you.

I love the idea of a test for libertinism.

I know of multiple parents (none of them well) who have allegedly given their kids the middle name Danger.

Were any of their surnames "Zone"?

102: I thought the idea was to force you to room with somebody completely different from you as a kind of rite of passage. There's a John Updke story about this.

A friend of mine was put in a triple, where the three of them were (essentially) named Jennifer Noel, Jennifer Mistletoe, and Jennifer Christmas Carol. (I can't remember the middle names, but they're all astonishingly Christmas oriented.) I assume someone got a chuckle over assigning them together.

I thought it was pronounced 'Dee'ath'? But wiki says:

The name Death is usually pronounced /ˈdiːθ/, but in Murder Must Advertise Lord Peter (investigating undercover under the name Death Bredon) says "It's spelt Death. Pronounce it any way you like. Most of the people who are plagued with it make it rhyme with teeth, but personally I think it sounds more picturesque when rhymed with breath."

/ˈdiːθ/ of course being the good Scottish pronunciation for 'death', anyway.

111: Yeah, whoever did the sorting at the U of C must have been gleefully cackling over things like that. Although by now I've forgotten all the examples.

I suppose it doesn't make a whole of difference how you pronounce it when your time comes.

I've never read any Sayers, but looking at wiki, Wimsey had excellent taste in cars.

111/114: I am confident that as a sorter I perpetrated matches of that sort - I have a vague memory of pairing hometowns with contrasting or harmonizing names as well - but I have indeed forgotten the details.

(Also, as our student body was not huge, I think I did much of the matching in an all-nighter not long before the assignments had to go out.)

I feel like the comments here are doing a bad job of acknowledging how tough it would be to be a single mom undergrad with a bunch of idiot students for classmates, and what a shitty job NYU is doing with that population. In a just world, whiny junior should have been able to write "I don't understand why you didn't put her in the single family housing that's prominently described in the housing brochure, the one with in-building day care."

If you're a bit more aristo, you spell it De'Ath.

"The crime is life peerage. The sentence is De'Ath."

Well, honestly, we don't know how tough it is for her. She might have all sorts of other workable solutions (that is, she might have the money for non-dorm housing, or to pay whatever the difference for a single, or whatever), and not have done so for a bad reason. Globally, it's a shame that universities aren't free, and that there isn't high-quality daycare everywhere, and so on and so forth, but short of that we really don't know that the difficult situation this woman is in is the best she could reasonably do given her resources.

Might be, but I'd need to hear more about her before I actively sympathized more than "Man, single parent in in college? that's got to be tough."

120: I disagree to the extent that I don't see that single mom should have a responsibility to pay extra for a single to avoid annoying roommate so long as she is complying with the rules, which appears to be the case. Deal with it like you deal with any other annoying roommate situation.

Also, Halford is right in 118.

100 - Or my favorite physicist who is not an Unfogged commenter, Cambridge black holes expert Dr. Peter D'Eath. I think eventually Spiderman and Captain America team up to stop him.

I'll vote with the camp of no overnight guests without approval of your roommate. Public shame and reciprocal need should sort most of it out.

It is part of the dorm experience to have a potentially horrifying roommate. (Cowboys fan/Republican/Seal Hunter)

121: See my 97 -- I think you're right, that as long as the parent is within the rules, she's not acting particularly badly. I just don't think we've got much to go on to sympathize with her about -- she might be doing the best she can with limited resources, she might be being a bit of a jerk, past "Wow, undergrad with a kid? Rough" there's not much to go on.

63: Aw, c'mon....you can't set 'em up and knock 'em down!

106 to 122.

Do we know that she's single? Maybe she's living away from her family to go to school, far enough that six nights in a row versus three nights twice would be important.

There was a guy I knew slightly in college who lived in the drug frat who had a kid. I think the mom lived in town, but I'm not totally sure. I remember seeing the kid in that place and it was totally like the most terrifying thing ever.

As to the mom here, it's always hard to play "who is the asshole" from 40,000 feet, but that's never stopped the Internet from trying.

Seal Hunter

In Obama's America, SEALs hunt you.

124: Yeah, I'm just unwilling to assume "she might be being a bit of a jerk" when the available evidence says otherwise. I mean, she might be suffering Munchausen's by proxy and be feeding the 4-year old wine and cleaning products, but from what we know she's just a normal mom who is following the rules and asked her roommate for permission rather than attempting to just circumvent the rules.

from what we know she's just a normal mom who is following the rules

Normal is a loaded word, but she's certainly doing something very unusual by having a small child reside for six days a month in a college dorm. What she's doing seems to be within NYU's rules, but you've got to admit that it's unconventional. You don't have to admit that that it's burdensome for her roommate, but I think it is. Once you're doing anything that unusual, that the people affected by object to, the possibility that you're being inconsiderate is, I think, on the table.

I think it's also possible that she's stuck with limited resources and doing what she sees as the best she can, and isn't being a jerk at all -- with what we know I can't tell.

I mean, when someone has been a demonstrable jerk, I'm totally on board with the idea that we don't negotiate with terrorists. But from the link, it appears the mom tried to work with the roommate and the roommate preferred to have a snit about lifestyle choices rather than try to work out a mutually agreeable solution.

It's objectionable to the roommate b/c the roommate objects to 4-year olds per se.

I don't see what's so bratty about the email. It reads like she's talked to a number of administrators and been rebuffed, she's considered it from the perspective of her roommate and expressed sympathy, and set down her arguments carefully and persuasively. The only thing I found even slightly annoying was her use of rhetorical questions, and maybe the quote at the end. But she doesn't come off as snide or disrespectful at any point!

A bit surprised by this, but I agree with 118. ISTM there's an interesting argument to be had about NYU's policy, but this letter-writer couldn't be making her case more poorly if she tried.

Does the university want the liability of a kid in a normal dorm that much? Granted that the mother and the university are responsible for everything they would be in the absence of Snellgroves, it's still more risk, and more importantly a different kind than usual, to have a child there. And I assume the mother would have preferred a single room herself, but couldn't get it. That's bad, especially when there's a practical reason for it like this. Not only that, but at one point Snellgroves says "I have cc'ed one of the roommates that is also happy to speak further about the situation." This means that there are three students in the room. The university really couldn't have found anything better for someone with this family situation?

But no, 90 percent of Snellgrove's letter is just "Poor me, I might have to deal with a kid touching my stuff now and then, it's not fair." Boo fricking hoo.

(I'd assume that the mother didn't request a roommate. If she did, I'd think a little bit less of her overall, but (a) we don't know that and (b) even so it's not relevant. I'd also assume that we're talking about people sleeping in the same room, not a suite. If it's just a suite, then Snellgrove really has nothing to complain about, and for that matter a suite might be sufficient accommodations for a single parent after all.)

Is essear around? Is this a real thing? It reminds me of my former colleague, Alan Taylor (the economic historian not the historian historian), who including a footnote in a paper citing: "Common sense."

133: Is it clear that the roommate's objections are to children in general, rather than to that child in particular? I'm as annoyed by her letter as everyone else, but I think it reveals the rhetorical corners into which one can be painted when trying to talk about children with parents. It's at least possible that she's saying that it's not good for the child to be in the dorm because she feels that she can't say that it's not desirable for her; and she's saying that the problem is with four-year-olds in general because she feels that she can't say, "roommate's child, in particular, is annoying."

132: Well, tried to work with the roommate to the extent that she seems to have stated an intention to have the kid over to the maximum extent allowed by the rules, and is seeking the roommate's permission to exceed that maximum extent. If the roommate's starting position is that they're uncomfortable with the kid their at all, that doesn't show a lot of willingness to compromise.

From the letter, it sounds like a suite of 6, with 2 to a bedroom.

137: I think it's real -- I remember seeing it before.

I just googled to see if there had been any university response. I didn't find one, but Snellgroves seems to be a competitive ice dancer?

So the not-bratty thing to do would be to shut up and deal with it, rather than to rewrite the email in a gentler, more respectful tone? Kind of begs the question.

138: Like the administrator cited in the letter suggested, we would find this position unacceptable if it were "lesbian partner" the roommate wasn't uncomfortable having there at all. I get objecting to overnight guests generally, but once you've accepted overnights generally, objecting based on the category of person is problematic. ("Infant" I would accept as objection because I think it's pretty fair to assume that crying and mid-night wakings are pretty universal...)

I looked up the relevant Web site, and found this:

Room and Building Features

1-3 bedroom apartments with 1-3 persons per room. Shared studio apartments for 2 persons. Loft apartments divided into 6 rooms for 11 persons. Single bedrooms, all in multi-room suites or apartments.

So that very same building has single bedrooms. So if the student mother had to live in that exact building for some reason - which is totally plausible; who knows what it's close to - then either she specifically requested a roommate or NYU couldn't be bothered to find a different room for her in the same building. Just to be clear, I find the second possibility most likely overall, and even if the mother requested a roommate I'd still find NYU somewhat to blame for the problem.

142: After Oudemia sucked me into Google with ICE DANCER, I learned that the mom-roomate has since been moved to a single, and that the letter wasn't an email to administrators, it was something that Snellgroves (who has a face weirdly like an ex-colleague??) published on a campus blog/newspaper type site, thus "going public" with the dispute.

Ah. Okay. That's really bratty.

Yeah. NYU? Much better than I thought. Roommate? Much worse.

Although I guess it worked -- I mean, NYU gave the mom her single after the roommate wrote pathetic emails to HuffPo (!!!) etc.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that the roommate has no conceivable responsibility (legal or moral) to childproof her stuff, once she knows that a small child is going to be spending a great deal of time there. Dorm rooms I am familiar with -- mine at Cal, my son's now -- are very very small. All guests are an imposition, but when an adult guest gets bratty or disruptive (and I don't consider this just possible, but inevitable, given the ages involved) the roommate can simply have them thrown out. Can't do that with a 4 year old.

NYU should work to find the mother a single room.

148 to 147/147: If NYU was stonewalling until the roommate went public? I'm not thinking too harshly of her. And the mother's better off now, at least most people would prefer a single to a shared room, whether or not they had kids. So the brattiness ended up benefiting the mother.

151: Maybe the mom had been hoping for a conveniently located babysitter.

143: And this is why we have the analogy ban.

Come to think, you know what the big issue would be for sharing a room with a little kid? Bedtime -- odds are you wouldn't be able to use your bedroom between the kid's bedtime and when you were ready to go to sleep. That was always the downside of traveling with the kids when they were little, the couple of hours in a motel room being very quiet with the lights dimmed after they went to sleep but before Buck and I were ready to.

153: Absolutely, bedtime and naptime both would be pretty huge impositions. Asshole (or even peachy) boyfriends can be told to go home.

136: Yeah, you can see the whole paper here. Presumably I've already complained here about the incredible stupidity of the whole faster-than-light-neutrino thing.

I learned from bad sci-fi that neutrinos can do anything. I don't want to know otherwise.

My college roommates all took far more naps than my 4-year old ever did (daily vs. never). Also, I oftenwent to bed earlier in college than Rory typically did at 4. (One of the more dramatic dorm moments of my college career involved being woken from a very sound sleep by my roommate and friends watching Saturday Night Live. I woke up, growled, and stormed off to sleep on a couch in the basement of the building. We all laugh now...) Sometimes I had to be quiet because my roommate was napping. Sometimes my roommate had to be (or should have been, grrr!) quiet because I went to bed at 8 p.m. Accommodating someone's nap or bedtime is not some crazy feature or dorm life that only exists when weirdos bring their 4-year olds.

154: Also, really? Your roommate's boyfriend falls asleep in the room while visiting, you would have told him to get up and go to his own room? Really?

I would not have reacted well to having a toddler roommate when I was 20 either.

I wasn't all that fond of having another 20-y.o. in the room, frankly. I lived on campus 4 of 5 years because, after year 2, I got a single (and there was no way to afford an off-campus efficiency that wasn't insanely distant).

Given how much I loathed having roommates*, I suppose it's to BOGF's credit that we got along fine as cohabitants.

*both were fundamentally decent people - I had no complaints beyond the usual

One of the more dramatic dorm moments of my college career involved being woken from a very sound sleep by a 7 AM phone call from my long-distance girlfriend after I had been working on a problem set until 4 AM the night before. I don't entirely remember what I said but I remember my roommate saying later, when I woke up, "do you realize how you sounded when you answered the phone at 7?" and looking kind of scared. That relationship didn't last too much longer.

Eloise in the Dormitory has some potential as a sequel.

153: I suppose we haven't spent all that much time in motel rooms, but the kids pretty much always stay up roughly as late as we do. But Iris is a total night owl, and Kai can either hang or sleep through anything, so that's easy enough.

157: Certainly, some four-year-olds stay up later than some college students, but that's really not the way to bet.

158: Really? Yeah, sure. If I wanted to do something in my room that was waking him up, I would tell him he was free to leave if he didn't want to be awake. Really!

158: I think the implication is that he would be told to go to his own room if he wanted peace and quiet for sleeping at an unconventional hour.

An important component of the peep legend is that no matter the circumstances, at 8:30 pm, I would tell everyone it was my bedtime and go to bed.

The idea that there were "conventional hours" for sleeping in college dorms is just not consistent with my experience. It was pretty much conventional that someone was sleeping at just about any hour of the day. And usually sleep was such that people could easily go about their business while other people slept unless their business required an unusual amount of noise.

Yes, but those people were drunk.

And 167 doesn't sound at odds with having a four year old in your room?

168: So maybe the real point is that the ice dancer shouldn't have been so worried about the toddler drinking her wine.

I've never lived in a shared flat where it wasn't true* that, i) if you are sleeping in the daytime, and you get woken up, tough shit, and ii) you have a reasonable expectation that people will be quiet late at night and early in the morning.

* with people not being arseholes when there were genuine reasons** for needing to sleep during the day, or be relatively noisy late at night.

** travelling all night, working night shift or whatever. Just pathological student sleeping patterns don't count.

169: It really doesn't, no.If the rommate is napping, the 4-year old can be told to play quietly (coloring book, puzzle), can go out into the common area (as described in the link) with mom, or can be taken by mom somewhere else on campus to hang. 4-year olds don't all just spend all their time either screeming or sleeping so lightly that nary a sound can be made.

Many 4-year olds also type better than I do.

The problem with four year olds is once they get to know you, they do not shut up. And you can't be mean to a four year old. So if you're nice to the 4 year old once, then you are going to get your ear talked off, whether watching TV or reading your book or whatever, and you can't just glare at them the way you can another 18 year old.

(Obviously you can say "Hi Frankie! I'm reading right now! Sorry," but that takes some know-how with small children.)

4-year olds don't all just spend all their time... sleeping so lightly that nary a sound can be made.

Most of the ones I've known have spent the hours between, say, eight in the evening and seven in the morning sleeping in a manner that requires a quiet, dark room. That's not all four-year-olds, obviously, but it's I think most of them.

The problem with four year olds is once they get to know you, they do not shut up.

See, I think the underlying objection is based on a bunch of generalizations just like this. Rory wasn't like this at 4. The roommate in 157 totally was -- as soon as I started to fall asleep, she'd launch into deep discussions of religion, politics, and so on. (I tried to retaliate a few times by waking her up at 8 in the morning when I was leaving for classes, but girl slept like a freaking rock.

(It may not be sounding like it, but this was my very favorite roommate ever. AWesome, awesom human being.)

Maybe if I'd been quieter and darker, Rory would have slept more as a kid. If I got her to sleep between 10 and 6, I was lucky.

I'm noticing a lot of prejudice against 4-year olds here. It's no wonder we can't get any to comment here.

NYU should get the mother a single room, even if the roommate is being a total brat. Dealing with a four-year-old isn't like dealing with a roommate's annoying adult friends or hypothetical romantic partners (and having a third person move into a tiny dorm room would normally be a cause for complaint.)

How many 4-year-olds could you take in a fight beer pong?

177: Racist.

That's not all four-year-olds, obviously, but it's I think most of them.

And I bet you are wrong. Lots and lots of 4 year olds are never going to have the luxury of their own quiet, dark room to sleep in from 8 until 7.

"Dealing with a four-year-old isn't like dealing with a roommate's annoying adult friends or hypothetical romantic partners" is I believe the conclusion Di Kotimy is saying anything and everything to avoid.

"Dealing with a four-year-old isn't like dealing with a roommate's annoying adult friends or hypothetical romantic partners" is I believe the conclusion Di Kotimy is saying anything and everything to avoid actively and specifically disagreeing with.

I certainly agree that most 4-y.o.s have sleep patterns entirely incompatible with those of most 20-y.o. students, but IMLimitedE, kids who sleep a lot aren't all that sensitive to environment. IOW, quiet and dark or 8pm to 7 am, but not both. If the kid's body needs 11 hours of sleep, it's probably not all that picky about circumstance.

But anyway, there are literally millions of 4-y.o.s at any given moment, and each is a unique snowflake, so shouldn't we cherish each one send them to boarding school for professionals to handle?

179: They did give her her own room! The real world problem is over! It only lives on as the cause du jour for our ongoing online game of wits!

Also, wasn't this literally an Adam Sandler movie? I think I saw it.

Can we at least all agree that a 4-year old in your room would be no more annoying than Adam Sandler?

37: four year olds don't give you bullshit? Let me introduce you to my four year old.

It's unclear to me that the roommate actually planned to have her kid regularly stay there--because why would she possibly want to when it was only a potential solution 1/4 time?.

Yes, but I'm a segregationist when it comes to comedians, too.

186.2: Big Daddy? But IMDb says the Adam Sandler character already graduated from law school, and has a nice apartment in Manhattan.

188: Your kiddo is 4 already?! Holy crap, time flies.

190 -- oh, right. It was like a hazy fever dream.

||Since this is the thread about young people in nominally adult environments: how old is old enough to be introduced to the works of George V. Higgins? Because on the bus this morning I inadvertently introduced a random teenager to the works of George V. Higgins,* and I can't decide if I did a great service in bringing quality crime fiction to a new generation, or if I just contributed to the corruption of this kid's moral character and set him up for trouble when he comes home from the library with a book like that. I suspect a little of both. Of course I don't actually know how old this kid was, I'd guess h.s. junior, give or take. I am confident that he was older than 4.|>

*I was reading Cogan's Trade on my tablet, and the kid standing behind me, evidently reading over my shoulder, asked me what it was because he thought it looked like a good book. Caught me off guard enough that I told him before pausing to wonder about age-appropriateness; and he double-checked the name with me when he got off the bus, so it seems like a fair chance he really planned to get hold of it.

I reckon a 16 year old is old enough to read just about anything.

Can we have Comment Like a Cowboy Day?

195 to "I reckon".

High-school juniors should be old enough to be exposed to anything, I would have thought. At that age I'd have been really pissed off if anyone suggested I shouldn't be reading something I was reading.

194: This. And the kind of sixteen-year-old kid that's mooching book recommendations off strangers on the bus is (a) the kind of kid I hope to be raising and (b) already reading more deeply age inappropriate stuff than you can possibly imagine. Do I have to link Roy Orbison in clingfilm again.

At that age I'd have been really pissed off if anyone suggested I shouldn't be reading something I was reading.

Actually what really pissed me off, after almost making me cry, was the middle school librarian who bawled me out for checking out the most advanced math books I could find.

When I was in middle school, that is. I wasn't lurking in middle school libraries at 16 or whatever.

Yeah, sounds right; although h.s. junior really is a guess and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if he was a year or two younger. More concerned by the extremely racially-charged nature of much of the language more than anything else. But, per 198, I loved the fact that he was asking a stranger for a book recommendation; if it had been a paper copy I would have given it to him on the spot.

Actually what really pissed me off, after almost making me cry

Awwwww, geez! Bad librarian.

199: wtf??? !

I can imagine an (asshole) librarian thinking that a kid couldn't possibly want to read them, so he must have been intending to vandalize or steal them. You'd think a little questioning would have reassured the librarian, but not doing that is why they were an asshole.

Oh, wait. But they were books that were in the middle school library? Then wtf indeed.

There are many, many writers you can't properly understand at 16. But the 16 year old won't realize that until they are 35.

The issue here is not the relative obnoxiousness of the 20 year old boyfriend and the 4 year old kid. It's the implicit contract of Going Off To College and Living in A Dorm. Child care is not part of it. Also, if she wants the kid to stay with her often the mother should probably be living off campus. If that is not possible at NYU she could have chosen another school. (I'd think differently about that if it wasn't for the circumstances -- mother who already had a kid when she applied attending one of the most expensive/prestigious private universities in the country -- presumably if she's at NYU she had the money/grades/family backing to attend lots of different places).

193 - I hope you gave him the book recommendation in the voice of Eddie Coyle.

Who knew Peter Boyle used to play a gangster.

||

NMM to Proposition Joe.

|>

Oh, wait. But they were books that were in the middle school library? Then wtf indeed.

It was misfiled and was intended to be a reference book, and one of their student assistants had let me check it out by accident. Lots of shouting about how I had somehow sneaked it out and I had no business with such a book and couldn't possibly want to read it followed.

But the 16 year old won't realize that until they are 35.

Wow, I guess I have a lot of enlightenment coming up in a few years. Better mark my calendar.

||
A while ago there was a 'I'm a SF reader but there isn't any SF any more' motif du comments; I went looking for SF specifically. Tor is probably where I got the impression that SF is rarer. Angry Robot does a lot of fantasy, but also SF, and their taste seems pretty reliable (and DRM-free, IIRC). Nexus feels like an old-fashioned hard SF novel, including just-really-imaginable tech and more action than interiority, for instance.

And then there's the Human Wave, which I enjoyed as pulp (e.g., Hoyt) until I read their manifestos. I haven't decided why the manifesto turned me off so much, but now I expect something as predictable the end of the Lensmen series at every turn.
|>

211: I'm nearly 50, and I haven't figured out anything yet. Well...when I was 16 I seriously identified with Dostoyesky characters, and thought I was just like them. I've realized that I was wrong about that.

I read an awful lot of classics of English literature in high school. I keep on thinking that I should go back over them, assuming that I've emotionally matured in the intervening decades, but I'm not actually all that confident about the emotional maturity, and I seem to have lost my attention span for reading anything longer than four paragraphs.

210: Reference materials getting checked out is the worst thing that can happen to a librarian. Even though it wasn't your fault I can understand the librarian getting upset.

Reference materials getting checked out is the worst thing that can happen to a librarian.

WE THINK NOT.

Challenge accepted.

YOUR IMAGINATION IS SADLY LIMITED.

216-218: Are you going to make me post a link to Standpipe's blog?

yesssss

I've had a librarian accuse me of "getting away" with breaking their policy on book renewals - once your renewal limit is reached, the book has to be reshelved before you can check it out again - when it turned out I had remembered doing something at a different library with a different policy (where you could renew in person once you reached the limit, but phone/online renewals were not allowed past the limit).

The conversation ended with me walking away with the book saying I'd just pay the fine. But then I never had to pay a fine at all because the library had two copies so I just checked out the other one and returned the one I had tried to renew!* This has got to be more of a thread-killer than talking about academic budgeting.

In more exciting library circulation news, I checked out a book from LAPL a couple months ago and was told, "There are no special restrictions on the book, but it says here that I'm required to tell you that the book cost $140 so please don't lose it."

What book is it? "Fifty Shades of Gray, the extra porny edition"

An older edition of a textbook for a Coursera course I ended up not doing. I returned the book, possibly even on time.

re: 222

I probably shouldn't say this, but we had a meeting the other day, and one of the curators had left a rare book* in the meeting room that a visiting scholar wanted to see. As it's winter, and the aircon makes the building dry, they had a humidifier on full blast as the book was in a box waiting for the visitor. Our room, that we'd booked (and which they, the humidifier-mongers hadn't).

So of course we turned the humidifier off.

Boss:'We'll just humidify the room the natural way.'

* Probably not that rare. Some sort of incunabula. Ahem.

the natural way

Breathing? Pots of tea? Not triple-glazing the windows?

Breathing, yeah.*

* It was fine. The meeting only lasted a a short while.

218 to 226.

On the chalkboard of the kids' room at the local anarchist center today:

NO GODS
NO TIMEOUTS

I think a four year old is FAR preferable to most 19 year old boyfriends who might visit. Smaller, able to cause less damage, less likely to try to have "quiet" sex in the middle of the night you have to pretend to sleep through, much less likely to drink the roommate's wine or smoke her pot. Also, a four year old isn't really a toddler, s/he can sleep through the night (12 hours straight, like college students).

I agree that it might not be what you expect, but a lot of the girl's concerns didn't seem valid. Four year olds can witness people drinking wine, and as long as the mom doesn't make the roommate babysit, there's no reason she should have to monitor the cleaning supplies.

I'm not a particularly wild person, but I think that the roommate shouldn't feel too much pressure to be "kid friendly" (whatever that means...for my parents it four meant you were ready for some of the later Bergman and French sex farces). If the mother is horribly offended by the roommate doing run of the mill college student stuff, then she can choose to not have the kid sleep over.

230: The thing about young kids, I have noticed, when I wasn't biting them in half and going RAAAAAAR*, is that they talk to whoever is there, and they talk a lot. It's not this neutral "oh my four-year-old is in the room" thing. You can't necessarily say "I'm actually writing a paper on 18th century Russian poetry right now, can't talk!" to a four-year-old and reasonably expect the four-year-old to say "I totally get you. Derzhavin is rich stuff, no? I'll fuck off somewhere and have some formula.**" and if you simply ignore them, you are an asshole. They are probably less annoying to you than a 19-year-old because you like them. They're not to everyone, and while the ongoing presence of 19-year-olds is pretty much unavoidable at college, the ongoing presence of toddlers is a special circumstance.

*all day long I have wanted to go to a caricaturist in Times Square and when they ask me what my hobbies are, say "the internet, and eating children" so I could post it on the flickr feed and be the official monster of unfogged.

**Oh I'm kidding. I know four-year-olds don't eat formula.

231.last: Only because the La Leche League shames them out of it.

I'm not a particularly wild person, but I think that the roommate shouldn't feel too much pressure to be "kid friendly"

I am completely indifferent to children and even I can't ignore the internalized societal obligation to be nice and nurturing to kids. I don't think that it's reasonable to expect that people can just turn off that expected behavior.

I completely understand her concern about the liability issue and perceived obligation to monitor the child, but the biggest reason I'd be lobbying for a room change is because I'd be very concerned about ever-increasing presence of the kid as she stated in her email.

It's funny. I don't feel any greater obligation to be nice to four-year olds than than I feel toward adults. But I will concede that I would do well to get more comfortable being more of an asshole* to adults.

*Not calling anyone here an asshole. Just enmeshed in yet another frustrating situation that would have been completely avoidable had I just had the sense to say, "Oh just fuck off," instead of trying to be all nice and nurturing to an overgrown manchild.

It's funny. I don't feel any greater obligation to be nice to four-year olds than than I feel toward adults. But I will concede that I would do well to get more comfortable being more of an asshole* to adults.

*Not calling anyone here an asshole. Just enmeshed in yet another frustrating situation that would have been completely avoidable had I just had the sense to say, "Oh just fuck off," instead of trying to be all nice and nurturing to an overgrown manchild.

Maybe I'm an asshole, because I would have no problem telling a four year old I was too busy to talk and then ignoring said four year old. I guess the thing is, all this assumes that the mom won't be with the four year old in the room, at the same time. It is the mom's job to keep the four year old entertained in a way that won't totally bother the roommate. If the mom is asking the roommate to babysit, or using dorm time to zone out with headphones or take a nap, leaving the four year old to the his/her own devices, then the mom is an asshole, which is a separate problem. That the roommate feels some sort of generalized societal pressure to be motherly is not really the mom's problem, as long as she's not asking the roommate to be motherly.

Also...I have had roommates with boyfriends who wouldn't shut up, and who probably would have understood 18th century Russian poetry as much as a four year old. In fairness, this was not in college though.

I don't feel any greater obligation to be nice to four-year olds than than I feel toward adults.

Alack, I think for me that not having kids makes me very over-attentive when one is in my vicinity. I pay more attention to them out of fear, because I can never tell what crazy thing they will take it into their wee heads to do.

You know what sure doesn't work? Telling a four year old you are too busy to talk. Or at least it doesn't work for a five year old.

Anyhow, NYU should have put this Mom into a single unit right away and the more I think about it the crazier it feels. Spending tons of time with a young child is hard if you're a married couple, it's ridiculous as something forced on you by surprise as a 20 yr old with another adult you don't know. Note also that its a huge burden on mom, who now has to worry not only about kid but also about kids reaction to roommate and vice versa. Glad that NYU did the right thing.

75 77 82 84

So it is offensive to suggest a woman might have reason to be concerned about sharing a dorm room with a physically mature male with the mind of a four year old?

derp

239: Yes.

derp

242 is also really offensive.

Why is that offensive?

242 used to contain a link to a video that I guess was offensive.

There was a link that has since been removed, I think.

I thought the link was pretty offensive, for the record. But I also think read should fuck off.

Hey, Stanley, thanks for recommending Bulleit rye. I like it better than any of the bourbons I've tried.

You're welcome. I'm glad you liked it. I'd suggest Catoctin Creek, but I doubt they make it that far north.

Yeah, liquor stores around here seem to have very limited rye selections. I've never seen Catoctin Creek.

I bought Rowan's Creek bourbon last night but had heartburn after dinner (why hello, my encroaching 40s) and only barely tasted it.

Ooh, Catoctin Creek - my home turf! (My dad gave them the name for their pear brandy. I should open my bottle of it some time.)

Catoctin Creek tastes kind of buttery and candyish. If you like that in a whiskey, then go for it. I don't.

In highschool I had a single for 3 years and then chose to have a roommate, but our beds were in a loft.

In college, we always lived in suites. My freshman year there were a couple of shared bedrooms and 2 singles for 6 of us. Sophomore year was tighter, but there was always a non-sleeping living area. By Senior year everyone had his or her own sleeping room even if they had to share a suite.

A friend of mine had a highschool classmate who got pregnant in highschool after attending a fancy DC private school. She went to the University of Maryland for a couple of years and then to Barnard. Barnard gave her an apartment, because she was a single Mom.

101: My freshman year we lived in a dorm with the bathrooms in the hallway. One of the guys would always lock himself out of his room, so he'd hang out in his robe with my friend who waited until his roommate got back from breakfast or a class. They had a roommate from Malaysia, I think, who strenuously objected and she got moved. The really awkward bit was that our proctor/RA person sat them all down for a chat about valuing themselves or something since the young woman presented it as her roommates being promiscuous.

Downstairs there was a group of male roommates who had a Conservative Muslim roommate who stopped them from listening to music with female vocalists.

"Little Lord Fauntleroy's Prep School For Albino Hemophilliacs".

I ran into someone with the last name Fauntleroy the other day.

I ran into someone with the last name Fauntleroy the other day.

How did they pronounce it? I've never known whether it was:
Faunt'əlroy
Faunt'ləroy
Fauntlee'roy
or something weird, like pronouncing Leveson-Gower as "Leeson Gore"?

a Conservative Muslim roommate who stopped them from listening to music with female vocalists.

My favorite roommate and I had a bilateral ceasefire agreement involving The Cure and Barry Manilow.

257: I don't know. I didn't actually meet him, just saw his name in print.

257: Also, he was African-American, so I don't know whether that would affect it.

I was worried that my son would miss out on going away to college due to his grades. I realized that a lot of what I wanted him to have was the experience of living in a dorm.

For a week each summer during high school, I went away to band camp (shut up), which was held on a college campus. So I learned early on that living in dorms sucks balls.

I lived in a dorm my freshman year, then took a year off school and shared an apartment with my best friend. Never went back to dorm living after that.

I sent him away to boarding school so I don't worry about that as much.