Collegiate Times

On move-in day, many first-time roommates exchanged excited hellos. Poster-hanging strategies and hometown stories were discussed in sing-song tones. There was music and the utterances of ?pleases? and ?thank-yous? in the air.

However, three weeks into the semester the gong of battle clangs. Suddenly the perfect roommate has become a clothes-hurling, rotting-food-hoarding monster that sucks the face off her boyfriend every moment you?re in the room. Roommate conflict is not abnormal in the college realm, and despite one?s initial feelings of helplessness, there are many positive ways to approach it.

Stephanie Sargent, an assistant communication professor who teaches interpersonal communication, says that there are three basic types of conflicts. ?Pseudo-conflict? is triggered by a lack of understanding and happens when people simply miss the meaning in a message. ?Simple conflict? stems from a difference in ideas, definitions, perceptions and goals. ?Ego conflict? is when a pseudo-conflict or simple conflict escalates into a personal attack such as name-calling ? the two individuals start focusing on personalities instead of the issue at hand.

Sargent said simple conflict is the most common type of conflict between roommates, because while you may have been friends before living together you realize that you are two very different people after you?ve moved into an apartment or dorm room. This generally causes simple conflict and if it is not acknowledged and resolved, it can escalate into ego conflict. Once you reach ego conflict, it becomes very hard to preserve the friendship.

?The best way for roommates to resolve conflict is to adopt a cooperative style of conflict management. When using the cooperative style, people view conflicts as a set of problems to be solved and wish for a win-win situation,? Sargent said. ?You should start off by bringing up the problem with the roommate but not in an accusatory fashion and discuss how to solve the problem. Keep these things in mind: separate the people from the problem, focus on shared interests, generate many options to solve the problem and base your decisions on objective criteria ? not just feelings.?

Sargent also suggests using ?I? language, such as ?I feel like you?ve been ignoring me? rather than ?You always ignore me when I try to talk to you.? This will keep both roommates calmer and less emotional.

If students are unable to handle their live-in stress factor themselves, there are other options available. Cook Counseling Center is available and free to any student who has paid his or her student health fee.

Cook Counseling Center?s assistant director, Rita Klein, said roommate conflict is approached in several fashions at the center. Roommates can attend counseling together, or individually.

?Although each situation is dealt with individually, one of the basic things that we try to communicate to the students we counsel is the importance of good communication skills,? Klein said. ?It?s so important to be effective in communicating what you like and what you don?t like to your roommate.?

Another way for dorm residents to approach the conflict is to talk to a resident advisor.

?My residents rarely approach me with a roommate conflict ? usually they wait until it is out of everyone?s control,? said senior resident advisor Lisa Richardson. ?Of the conflicts that I had last year, three of the four were frustrations about sleeping. The conflicts I hear most often are ?she gets up too early? or ?she stays up too late,? so this year I included the question ?are you a morning or a night person?? on the survey I gave my residents.?

One way that resident advisors are trained to deal with the conflicts that arise is through a roommate mediation session that both roommates and the R.A. attend. ?Once the mediation session is set up, I go into that meeting with a pen and paper,? Richardson said. ?I write down both sides of the story and then I ask them to write things down. We take all of our notes and come up with a roommate contract: a few guidelines both people feel they can live by.?

Whether students choose to get help from a R.A., a university counselor or handle it themselves, most conflicts can be remedied with good communication skills. Sargent recalls a time when she had a roommate conflict and was able to approach it positively.

?During my sophomore and junior college years, I lived with the same two girls. One roommate was the messiest person ? she would leave her dishes wherever she had been eating when she was done. For a while, we would clean her dishes for her but then after awhile we got really tired of it. We were taking care of her stuff and she would leave us little nasty notes about why we hadn?t done something like tell her that her boyfriend had called or why we hadn?t taken out the trash. We didn?t say anything but finally got up the courage and talked to her about it. She didn?t even know that her behavior was bothering us. If she had been paying attention, she should have been able to pick up on it. But we worked it out, and we managed to live together for another year.?