Choosing a dorm roomate should be left to students

By Hassan Al-Momani

Western Herald 

 Choosing a roommate might be a difficult choice during college. This is because of differences of lifestyles and ideologies among students.

Students’ choice of roommates is very beneficial for them. This is because giving the students the chance to choose their roommates makes them able to select the suitable roommates for their ideologies and lifestyles, which will make the dormitory rooms safer and calmer. Additionally, making students choose their roommates helps them succeed in their life later when they graduate because they will be able to make decisions about their partners.

Furthermore, having the right to choose their roommates, students’ personalities will be more developed because they will feel that they can choose and decide in life — so they have a sense of identity and independence. Allowing students to choose their roommates will certainly make college a more effective experience because of the harmony among students’ roommates, which is an essential point in advancing the progression of the university forward. This harmony makes students interact with each other positively and exchange their ideas in a useful way for the university. 

The freedom of choosing a student’s roommate is very essential for the social life. This is due to the fact that students have their standards of choosing their roommates, which are related to their personalities and ideologies. These standards reflect students’ identities and their abilities to be social with other members in a society. Thus, giving students the ability to choose their roommates indicates that we give them the ability to be sociable and effective in the community and university.

In contrast, having the university assign roommates for students might be negative. This is because the standards of universities to assign the roommates are not usually identical with the standards of students. In this case, students might feel that their choices are not respected by the university. Also, the universities do not often know about the personalities of students and their ideologies, so it might be hard for the universities to know which roommate is suitable for each other. Additionally, most roommates who are assigned by universities do not have a lot of shared things in their personalities and ideas. This might lead to a lot of problems in dormitory rooms and to the absence of a safe atmosphere. Furthermore, the absence of harmony among the roommates assigned by universities might make the student community unsociable and ineffective because students do not interact with each other effectively. In short, the choice of roommates by the university is not a good idea and it doesn’t make students more mature and independent in their social life because it makes them depend on others in choosing their partners later in their life.

Finally, I prefer to choose my roommate because this makes me more independent, sociable and mature. Also, it gives me the ability to choose the person whom I can interact with positively. I have my ideology and personality so I want to choose the roommate who is suitable to my standards.

Hassan Al-Momani, a Western Herald opinion columnist, is a graduate student majoring in English and can be reached via e-mail at hassan76us@yahoo.com.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=8880

Posted by heraldstaff on Sep 30 2009. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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