Rule setting while being at college or the university amongst you and your roommates

When you are away from home at college or the university you can have one of three basic accommodations: In a dorm room, inside a fraternity house or even sharing an apartment. In any of these cases, unless you are fortunate enough to be alone you will have roommates. Roomies are a good thing to have, since sometimes silence can be welcomed and sometimes it might be too much to bear.

But having roommates means that you need to develop a specific code and adhere to some general regulations. Feeling that there is no need to have house rules will only turn things into chaos and hell on earth for you as well as for your roommates; of course, this does not mean that you have to become the father or the mother of the place and remember everyone to wipe their feet. It means that everyone must be in accordance to what the rules of the den will be, such as specific days of the week where it will be allowed to have opposite sex companionship, who will do what of the household chores and when to exchange them and so on.

This will allow all of you to live in harmony and have a peaceful existence; this can even lead to life long friendships. Of course, you need to structure which parts of your coexistence together will require rules and regulations and which ones will not; mostly, it will depend directly on the type of accommodation that you have. If you are two or three persons in the same room, there has to be a tighter rule and regulation structure than if you have the convenience of having additional rooms and a common one.

Some of the areas that might suit you to place or dialogue for rules and regulations are:

• Room household chores (cleaning)
• Opposite sex companionship (night overs)
• Visits from other friends, opposite sex members and teammates.
• Study schedules (if you and your roommates are in different careers, then, chances are that you will have different examination periods and different study requirements)
• Supplies and grocery shopping (this could also be discussed on room household chores)

As a thumb rule, if you haven’t considered any situation in particular and it suddenly presents itself, then you might want to talk them out as soon as the opportunity presents itself and not wait until something that is generally disapproved happens causing conflict amongst all the residents.