Roommate Rants: Understanding Roommate Conflicts among MSU Students

Roommates seem to go hand in hand with the college experience. Conflicts are inevitable in life and when a pair or small group of college students live together, conflict is likely to occur. The purpose of this study was to find out what conflicts roommates experience, how they communicate those conflicts, and how they resolve those conflicts. All conflicts would involve a Minnesota State University, Mankato (MSU) student and their roommate(s). An online survey, consisting of twenty questions, was created and administered to Dr. Kristen Treinen\u27s SPEE 100: Fundamentals of Speech Communication class; twenty out of 750 students responded. The results indicate that there was a variety of problems among the roommates, which were linked to various factors such as the number of roommates living together, first impressions, and the roommates‟ comfort or ability to bring up major or minor issues with their roommates, as well as other factors