Rachel Fahlman was puzzled when she stumbled upon students camping out on a battered couch in the TV lounge of her Carleton University dorm. They had, after all, paid thousands of dollars to rent a room for the year.
It turned out they'd been sexiled: forced to find another place to spend the night while their roommates had sex in their shared room.
Ms. Fahlman, the floor's residence fellow, said the lucky ones had been given the heads-up by their roommates that they'd be kicked out. The less fortunate had been subjected to the moans, groans and twin-mattress squeaks while they lay in horror a few metres away.
Living in residence can be an exciting time for hormonal university students, but unfortunately, for those living with roommates, the enjoyable act of hooking up can also create serious friction.
Some universities are taking action. After students at Tufts University in Massachusetts filed about a dozen complaints last year about roommates going at it while they were present, the school responded this fall with a new rule in its guide to on-campus living: “You may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room.”
In Canada, we've taken a more peace-loving approach to the issue. For the most part, students are expected to sort it out between themselves – with mixed results.
At the start of her year as a residence fellow in 2006, Ms. Fahlman told the 53 students on her floor to “be respectful of the person you live with.”
Not longer after, however, she got her first complaint, from a young woman who said her roommate and her roommate's boyfriend engaged in late-night romps when they thought she was asleep.
Do Not Disturb sign. Digitally generated image isolated on white background
“She said, ‘I don't think my roommate thinks I'm awake or I can hear this, but it's going on all the time,'” Ms. Fahlman recalled.
It was just the first of several complaints. But a rule set by the housing department prohibiting sex when roommates were present would never fly, Ms. Fahlman said. It would be too tricky to police,.
Sean Moldowan, who served as a don in residence at Queen's University for two years, said rules such as the one at Tufts wouldn't work at his alma mater, either.
“It seems a bit extreme – it would be a nightmare to enforce,” he said.
In his experience, students were good at finding creative ways to avoid subjecting roommates to sexcapades. For example, as a twist on the classic sock on the doorknob, they took their name cards – which were posted on their doors – and flipped them upside down to indicate the room was temporarily off-limits.
At the University of Western Ontario, students are asked to fill out a roommate contract during orientation week. Residents sharing a room can work out the details of everything from study schedules to how to handle overnight guests – but housing officials can't force students to fill it out, and there are no official repercussions if they break the rules they created.
Even if the university received several complaints relating to sex, said Peggy Wakabayashi, the director of residences, she'd be wary of creating any kind of policy (again because of enforcement issues). Besides, most students would rather not bring such a touchy issue to university officials, she said.
Elizabeth Leal Conrad, the director of residences at Queen's, said students should deal with sex in shared rooms through proper communication with each other first, and then bring in a third party.
“There's no formal policy – we work through it as mediation,” Ms. Conrad said.
It is rare for university officials to intervene, but Ms. Fahlman remembers one incident from her first year of university that required extreme measures.
A young man who lived on her floor liked to pleasure himself several times a day, and had a way of signalling this to his roommate.
“When he didn't want his roommate to come into his room, he'd play Pink Floyd really loud,” she said.
But when The Dark Side of the Moon seemed to be on constant rotation, the roommate got fed up.
“He eventually got a room change,” she said.
In most cases, Ms. Fahlman found that students who came to her to complain just wanted to vent.
“I gave them the option that I could go talk to their roommate if they wanted me to, but nobody ever wanted me to pursue it,” she said.
When Krista Wunsch was in first year at Carleton, she confronted a suitemate about vigorous romps with her boyfriend, who came to visit every weekend. The offender was in a separate room, but the paper-thin walls did little to muffle the sounds of the young couple getting busy in the afternoon, the evening and, worst of all, at 4:30 a.m.
“It was her moans and his moans,” she explained with a sigh.
The confrontation backfired. Her suitemate thought it was a joke and started telling Ms. Wunsch about all the other places in the suite where she and her boyfriend had sex when no one was around: the bathroom, the living area and the kitchen table. Ms. Wunsch wanted to complain, but in the end just learned to deal – she found the subject too touchy to bring up with university officials.
“How do you say that? ‘My roommate's having sex very loudly.' I don't know how I would respond to that,” she said.
