Everyone's heard some version of the roommate-from-hell story.
Megan Little, a junior business analytics major, has hers: a roommate with extreme passive-aggressive behavior.
“She only communicated to me by writing passive-aggressive notes on our mirror and locking me out of the room,” Little said. “Once she told me there was a two-hour delay and there wasn’t, so I missed class.”
Little, who decided to live with a random roommate in Woodworth Complex her freshman year, was hopeful about making a new friend — but it wasn't long before she regretted her decision.
“I would hang out off campus a lot with people, just to avoid the room,” she said.
Jessica Ball, a sophomore elementary education major, lived in Studebaker East for her first year of college. Ball did not appreciate living with her roommate who she described as "a second mom."
“She was older than me and I missed class one time and she yelled at me for it, [even though] she missed class all the time,” Ball said. “She just like wanted to know everything about me and when I didn’t tell her something she went to my [resident assistant] and we had to have an RA mediation.”
Unfortunately for Ball, one meeting wasn’t enough and she ended up having three RA mediations in one semester. One meeting was three weeks before the end of the semester.
“That was really annoying because I was going to move out in two weeks so why did she care that much to get my RA involved,” she said.
Ball said spending all of her time with her roommate did not help the situation.
“My main mistake was hanging out with her all the time,” she said. “We tried to be best friends and rooming with your best friend does not work out.”
Even though going random is what caused her to have her first bad roommate experience, Ball went random again this year and said the second time around has been a much better experience.
“She’s just totally laid back and we just do our own thing and it works better than it did last year,” she said.
Some roommate horror stories arise from an overall lack of consideration for other people.
Ben Williams, a sophomore telecommunications and journalism major, lived with a roommate who was very inconsiderate.
“He vaped in the room all the time,” Williams said. “I was never able to have people over because of the conditions of the room and it was just a bad situation.”
Williams said his worst incident with this roommate came after he returned back to the room after being gone for a weekend.
“He had two of his buddies over and I was cool enough to be like ‘yes they can sleep in my bed I don’t care’,” Williams said. “ I came back, it was 1 a.m. and I was working on a paper, and when I put my hand up to climb in bed I put my hand in throw up. I freaked out on him but he just kind of brushed it off.”
Danielle Cahill, a junior speech pathology major, transferred to Ball State and thought living in the dorms would help her meet and make new friends.
Unfortunately, things did not go exactly as planned.
Cahill and her roommate moved to Woodworth early second semester after their beds collapsed in LaFollette Complex.
“We were already kind of having issues because she never cleaned up after herself and never respected my space,” Cahill said. “She would have guys over and I would walk in on them. I could never study in my room.”
The breaking point for Cahill came when things started going missing.
“My mom had been sending me gift cards to Walmart for groceries and stuff and they just kept coming up missing,” Cahill said. “I was talking to my best friend about it and he was like 'Dan, you have to be real here. Where else would they be going?’”
After her roommate went downstairs to eat, Cahill took a peek in her wallet and found the missing gift cards.
“She was taking the Walmart gift cards and having someone go buy her alcohol with it,” she said.
After confronting the roommate, the roommate admitted to also taking cash and even her laundry quarters.
“All I could say is lock up your wallet” she said. “It’s hard because you just don’t think you would have to do that when you are living with someone, you think that you could trust them and they wouldn’t get into your wallet while you were in class.”
Not all roommate horror stories happen in the dorms.
Rebecca Foster, a junior elementary education major, thought that living off campus would save her from having a bad roommate.
She was wrong.
After one of her friends graduated, Foster and her roommates had to find another girl for their apartments at Beacon Hill. They decided to pair up with a friend of the previous roommate who had just moved out.
"She moved in and it turned into a nightmare," Foster said. "She would use my toothpaste and my shampoo and conditioner and it really ticked me off. It got to the point where she would sneak into my room to get them."
If you have been living with a toxic roommate and need advice, check out what Charlie had to say to a student who wrote to the Counseling Center.
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