Category: Home

Home

6/10/2016

"A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body." - Benjamin Franklin

Hello world! If you are new, welcome to the Luminstruct blog! My name is Mark and I am currently working on a "365-Word Project" by posting reflections on various words every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Today's word is "Home".

When referring to a student's college experience, I often call the residence hall a home and the residents within this home make up a family. Just like any family, it is important to understand there will be moments when things go well, but there will be challenges which place strain on your relationships.

The easy way to begin building this family foundation is to lay out the expectations for one another. This can be easily done by creating a roommate contract (or roommate agreement).

While constructing this post, I researched many types of agreements (references listed below) and I was surprised to see how different schools handled this agreement.

Some were very open ended questions, some were more specific.
Some had self assessments to fill out before meeting with the RA.
Some included policy and procedures and discussed alcohol/drug issues.
Some included unique sections such as sustainability options and social media postings.

With so many variations, there is not a right or wrong way of creating this form. With this being said, I created an agreement which combined some of the features I felt were most important. I tried to stick with one of the more specific formats. Especially if you have not had a roommate before, it is easy to not think about areas to look out for. With us being the professionals, we are able to guide the students in the direction of our choice in order to tackle situations which have caused issues in the past. Feel free to utilize this free resource (download link is below).

Question time:
Which question did you wish was in your roommate agreement?