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With expanding technology, more roomie matches are made through cyberspace.
For Satit Koonopakarn, the gold dagger and book of chants were the first signs of trouble.
His freshman roommate at the University of Illinois at Chicago pulled out the items on move-in day, explaining that he was a Wiccan and liked to practice witchcraft. Months later, Koonopakarn said, he awoke during the night to find the roommate standing over his bed casting a spell.
“I was lying there thinking, ‘Please God, don’t let anything bad happen to me,’ ” Koonopakarn said with a chuckle.
Like most colleges with residence halls, U of I-Chicago makes an effort to pair first-year roommates who are compatible, often taking into consideration personality assessments and lifestyle questionnaires, among other factors. But some matches still result in disaster.
To minimize the horror stories, a small but growing number of schools are inserting online technology into the equation. They are setting up their own social networking sites, instructing students to create a profile and select a roommate for themselves — like Match.com for dorms.
Assigned roommates have already seized on Facebook and Myspace as a way to learn more about each other. Colleges field complaints from students, and their parents, seeking roommate changes even before the school year begins. Loyola University recently heard from the mother of a student who pulled up a photo of her roommate’s house on Google Maps and deemed it too shabby.
While some schools are now trying to use the technology to their advantage, other schools are pushing forward with traditional matchmaking, insisting students need to branch out of their comfort zones and experience diversity.
For the nearly 2.8 million freshmen heading off to college — one of the highest numbers in history — the roommate relationship may have the single greatest impact on their college experience, studies show. Students dissatisfied with their roommates are more likely to feel negative about college and suffer lower grade-point averages and retention rates.
This summer, Danielle Sterczek, 18, of Palatine, Ill., and Krysten Karns, 18, of Aledo, Ill., received random roommate assignments from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But once they discovered each other’s profiles days later on a group of incoming freshmen formed on Facebook, they successfully sought a swap.
Based on their profiles and online chats, it appeared they had a lot in common — including playing high-school sports. As long as everyone, including the original roommates, was in agreement, the college approved.
But many colleges insist that by selecting roommates online, freshmen miss out on the valuable learning experience that comes from living with people of different backgrounds.
“The more diverse the mix, the more interesting the conversation, thoughts and experiences that will emerge,” said Katie Callow-Wright, director of undergraduate housing at the University of Chicago.