Finding Roommates Online
by KYW's Dr. Marciene Mattleman
Sam Brown will be entering the University of Colorado this fall and when he received his roommate assignment he immediately looked him up on Facebook. Online scouting, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal has "dramatically changed the practice of learning to live with a stranger freshman year."
Assigned roommates often bring complaints from parents, although it takes a special situation for safety or health for schools to make a change. So, TU Logan, associate director of housing at the University of Florida, decided that students can make their own decisions and that using social media makes sense.
Growing popular is UroomSurf where students at Emory and Temple Universities and The William Patterson University of New Jersey join 83,000 students at 775 US schools involved in the website.
The article ends with a story of two freshmen at Arizona State, one a hippie and the other a Republican business major. That was five years ago and they're still friends. There's clearly something to be said about the old ways.
