By Erin Weaver
The story starts with four roommates, individual leases and a healthy dose of paranoia, and UO senior Oliver Neill tells it while sprawled across a beanbag twice his size. “We were three, four, very relaxed guys,” Neill starts, describing the apartment’s original group of friends. “At least, I was under the impression. And then we just kind of find out that he’s slowly losing his fucking mind.”
In what Neill deems an “interesting situation,” to put it lightly, one of the four original roommates became gradually convinced that another was going to kill him − and no, for those wondering, these fears weren’t founded. Seemingly out of the blue, he sat Neill down to explain his “interesting” position, but the roommates didn’t think much of it. It was only when the perfectly-normal-turned-delusional student would come home yelling the “offending” roommate’s name that Neill and the others realized that maybe it would be best for the apartment if he were to leave it.
So the paranoid roommate moved out. He packed up, broke his lease and left the remaining three with an unexpectedly empty bedroom and the dubious process of refilling it − and entering into what is essentially a kind of roommate roulette. Complexes like the one Neill was living in typically fill the rooms with whatever single individual is fresh off signing a lease, with little attention given to the compatibility these students might have with the established residents. To make matters worse, the roommate in question decided to vacate when this particular complex already had upwards of 750 rooms to fill, creating what Neill calls a “ruthless sales environment” where taking the time to thoughtfully pair strangers with new roommates is clearly off the table. “Bottom line,” Neill states, “it’s not a collaborative effort,” and residents are generally powerless when it comes to new cohabitors. “I had no say in any of these people moving in,” Neill says. “The first priority of the staff was just getting the spot filled.”
Who we’ll refer to as Roommate A, the first randomly-selected room-filler in a line of many, moved in a few weeks later. With the other roommates initially wary, “it actually ended up being great,” Neill says, and it’s clear that the two were fast friends. “He was a really awesome dude. And he was clean, and friendly, and we ended up getting close with this big community of Saudi kids who lived in the apartment complex.”
Neill goes on to describe biweekly meals, gathering around huge plates of the Saudi Arabian kabsa and swapping stories; to Neill, Roommate A provided a link to a colorful, lively group of people who were immediately keen to welcome him into their circle. “I would get a call at, like, midnight on a Tuesday and it would be from upstairs,” Neill says. “They’d be like, ‘Bro, kabsa, right now, come on.’ I’d run up there and we would all sit on the floor around this big plate, and we’d just eat super late into the night. We would share coffee and tea and kabsa for hours on end.”
Roommate A was later replaced by Roommate B, the apartment succumbing again to the revolving door of roommates, and Neill describes him as a “big fella and the friendliest dude on the planet,” and in Neill’s own words, “the journey continued” with the same involvement with the warm Saudi community, late-night kabsa circles, and story sharing. In that respect, Neill’s first random roommates became lasting friends and keys to entering an already-established, though welcoming, group; so far, Neill had hit the jackpot as far as roommate roulette goes.
The following summer, one of the original roommates jetted off to go study abroad, leaving yet another open bedroom that the complex was swift to fill. This time, the random occupying of the room didn’t result in such a stirling situation.
“He was…” For the first time, Neill hesitates. “I don’t even know how to describe him, he was such a character.”
Roommate C was “not very comfortable socially,” Neill says, especially with Roommate B. “Why can’t I get through to this kid?” Roommate B would ask, and Neill soon found himself in the awkward terrain between the two. They couldn’t seem to click, and the days were soon filled with awkward conversations and clumsy interactions; Neill goes on to describe the Roommate C-versus-everyone-else environment that blossomed in the apartment.
“My roommate experiences were weird,” Neill offers, “but I think I was lucky. It just depends on the people coming in. Two of the people I got stuck with were different but awesome and fantastic, and it just comes down to the environment you have in your apartment. I saw it work out amazingly for, like, a year.” Neill’s own encounters with randomly assigned roommates is mixed, then, with the good of Roommate A and B and their compassionate community balanced with the awkwardness that flourished in the apartment with Roommate C.
The questionable process of roommate roulette can therefore result in lasting friendships and experiences that would have otherwise not been possible − like Neill and the biweekly kabsa and tales traded late into the night − but might also create unavoidable tension. “Honestly, I would encourage living in an apartment complex like that to most people coming out of the dorms,” Neill says, even in the face of tenuous leases. “It’s a really nice transition between dorm life and house life. You get your independence but you still have that communal feel.” And even if you suddenly find yourself with an open bedroom, awaiting a random roommate the complex is poised to assign, you might get lucky and meet people you never would have interacted with before.