University of Virginia Library

Changing Roommates

For at least the past several years, the
Housing Office has followed a policy of
quietly allowing entering white students to
change rooms if they do not wish to live with
a black student. The scenario is familiar. The
white student's parents drive Junior down to
Charlottesville to embark on his University
career. To their consternation, the parents
find that their son has been assigned to room
with a black student. (They didn't know
Virginia was integrated.)

So the parents demand that their son be
assigned another room, their son goes along
with the request, and the Housing Office
approves the request. Within hours the boy is
safely ensconced with a white roommate. Two
things have happened. The white student's
inherited racism has been reinforced, and the
black student's first contact with the University
Administration has demonstrated that the
recruiting pitch about racial policies was just
so much hot air; the University accepts,
condones, and accommodates racism.

As the counselor on the corridor where
two such changes took place last September
pointed out, the changes were rationalized
with the idea that it would be an injustice to
both parties to force them to live together if
they were uncomfortable with each other. But
in at least one of the cases this fall, there was
no question of a personality conflict; the two
students did not even know each other.
Apparently, the judgment of the Housing
Office was that the difference in their races
was enough to produce a conflict and that
therefore the change was necessary. This
policy, while perhaps attempting consideration
for the people involved, actually
perpetuates an indefensible stance.

In the first place, it is very discouraging to
think that the high-flown rhetoric that the
University spouts about racial equality can be
set aside at the insistence of two bigoted
parents. Secondly, we find it disturbing that
the Housing Office apparently believes in the
equation of racial difference with personality
conflict. It may be unrealistic to expect that
contact with a black person will inevitably
lead the white person to liberalize his views,
but is it not equally so to assume that such
contact will automatically lead to unhappiness
for both parties?

An integrated University leads to contact
among students of the two races, contact that
leads to knowledge, knowledge that helps to
end prejudice. It may not always work; but
the Housing Office shouldn't refuse to give it
a chance to work by transferring students on
the first day.

Conflicts between roommates are part of
living in a dormitory. If it were the function
of the Housing Office to eliminate them, it
would assign everyone to a single room. The
policy of the Housing Office is intended to
insure that only major conflicts result in room
changes.

Time after time, segregated organizations
have cited such arguments as the Housing
Office uses in defense of their racist policies.
The Armed Forces used to say that
integration would destroy morale. Time after
time these arguments have proved to be
nothing more than rear-guard action by
segregationists. Of course, it often seems that
the entire University, in deed if not in word, is
fighting a rear-guard action in favor of
segregation.

In the future, we hope the Housing Office
will not allow parental pressure in a case of
racially mixed roommates to unduly influence
a change in room assignments. Parents and
entering first-year men should be aware when
admission to the University is sought that
such a situation might arise. Rather, the
normal channels of a cooling off period
(generally two weeks) and consultation with
the counselor and both roommates should be
followed before any change in room assignment
is allowed.