ResLife reluctant to move roommate matching online

Shortly after Kayla Velnoskey finished summer orientation last June, she began her quest for a roommate. She joined the Honors Humanities Facebook group, posted her biography and the rest was history.

"She asked me if I wanted to room with her, and it's worked out really well," Velnoskey, a freshman English and psychology major, said of her roommate, whom she plans on living with again next year.

Velnoskey's path to roommate harmony was a common one. Since Facebook's debut in 2004, students have increasingly demanded details on their roommates before committing to a year of shared refrigerators, TVs and bunk beds.

Yet, the Resident Life Department's criteria for matching up roommates remains five basic questions. And while department officials are discussing ways to bring roommate selection into the 21st century, so far, they've been reluctant to embrace the social networking boom.

Incoming freshmen have had the chance to share pictures, comments and life experiences on the university-sponsored social networking website TerpNet for the last two years. But Scott Young, Resident Life's assistant director for administrative and business services, said the department has only recently begun exploring ways to incorporate the site into roommate selection.

Young said the department's moved slowly on the issue as it has prioritized moving roommate selection online in recent years.

"Right now, over 50 percent of new students identify a specific roommate they want to live with already, so automating our room selection process took a priority over roommate matching the past two years," Young said, adding a decision to incorporate TerpNet into Resident Life isn't only up to his department.

"Incorporating a roommate matching into the site is not just a Resident Life decision, it involves [the Office of Undergraduate Admissions] and the university in general," he said.

But TerpNet isn't the only site beating Resident Life to the social networking punch.

A similar privately-run site, URoomSurf, seeks to match potential roommates from universities across the country. The site works like a dating service, asking students a variety of personality based questions and then matching up those with similar responses.

Students using the free service can weight the questions most important to them to achieve the most compatible results.

"If you look in Facebook groups for the past three years, you'll see students trying to find roommates by posting in discussion threads," Justin Gaither, who co-founded URoomSurf  last year, wrote in an e-mail.

In the future, Gaither said he plans to add more detailed questions to the survey and allow students to ask their own questions.

Students are turning to programs like URoomSurf in their roommate search because university housing programs simply aren't keeping up with the social networking trend, Gaither said. In its first month, URoomSurf already has 10,000 users.

"I think any reasonable person can look at what students are doing in these Facebook groups and realize whatever these colleges are offering isn't good enough," he wrote. "If these programs are working, why are students using rudimentary methods of finding roommates?"

Young said he doesn't see programs like URoomSurf as competition.

"The idea of a ‘system' to match roommates isn't new," Young said, adding that the university has been approached by similar vendors in the past.

Still, some have expressed frustration with the limited scope of the current system.
Although he filled out Resident Life's questionnaire, senior economics major Nicholas Choi's lifestyle clashed with his former roommate's.

"I stayed up late, and he went to bed early," Choi said, adding that their differences sometimes caused confrontations.

Contrary to some nightmare stories, other students have found different fates.

"I got lucky," freshman engineering major William Treiber said of his two roommates whom he was randomly assigned.

But even Treiber, who found success with Resident Life's roommate system, credited Facebook interactions for bringing him peace of mind.

"Without knowing their personalities, I wouldn't have been able to know if they would be effective roommates," he said.

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