Ryan 
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Dear Ryan,
My roommate is Hungarian and plays on the water polo team. He’s great, but he started bringing a lot of the other international students on the team back to our dorm. There’s Croatians, Italians, Australians, Portuguese, and more. Normally I’d love the chance to get to know the international contingent, but they’re really loud and come at awkward hours. How do I let my roommate know I want more privacy?
Sincerely,
Isolationist
Dear Isolationist,
Wow, talk about a dorm room melting pot! I myself have always been fond of the diversity at this school; I’ve always been of the belief that having such a wide range of cultures must certainly broaden one’s mind, and what else do we live for if not the broadening of the mind? That being said, it’s not hard to imagine that cultural differences make it harder to set limits about what you are and are not comfortable with in the dorm. In a situation like this, it’s important to distinguish between being an ass and being assertive, and in this case you MUST recognize that you are being reasonable, even if you feel like a buzzkill. Thankfully, you’ve turned to the right advice column, because in addition to this side hustle I also happen to be an amateur front desk clerk. Although I lack the formal dispute-resolving training of an RA, I’ve got twice the heart, triple the wisdom, and quadruple the desire to help.
The first thing you’re going to want to do is initiate an honest dialogue with this roommate of yours. Even though water polo players can be intimidating, remind yourself that humans are primarily land animals (the roommate has no advantage over you outside the pool setting). If you come at the roommate in a frank and peaceful way, they should see this as a gesture of goodwill – with any luck, your good-natured honesty should be rewarded with a good-natured response. Failure to have any sort of confrontation will only let your resentment grow, and it won’t be long before you find yourself totally at ends with this loud Hungarian fellow. Better to nip these things in the bud, I always say! Once you’ve made him aware of your concerns, he should ideally become more responsive, and in time, his behavior should demonstrate this responsiveness. That’s the long and short of it, as there really is no other way to go about it if you’re trying to be amicable about the whole thing. If the roommate doesn’t get their act together, always keep in mind you can go complain to your RA, or discreetly call your dorm’s front desk and file a noise complaint if they’re being loud during quiet hours (who knows, yours truly might be the one to pick up – how exciting!). Although you might feel bad doing this, don’t forget that you gave peace a chance before calling in the big guns.
Ultimately, living in such close-quarters with anybody will inevitably cause a certain degree of friction: everybody has habits that will bother their roommate in one way or another. At the end of the day, you are entitled to a peaceful night’s sleep and you are entitled to a reasonable amount of privacy – your roommate will either have to come to terms with your boundaries or go to war over something that they really should’ve been more aware of in the first place. Good luck, and happy hunting. Please feel free to reach out and let the CBR team know what becomes of your effort.
In your time of need, I leave you with what I believe is a relevant nugget of wisdom once spoken by Margaret “Marmee” March:
“…for love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride.”
Wishing you well,
– Ryan M
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