By The Editorial Board
Freshman year is a year of change. Moving away from home, learning how to manage your time, feeding yourself, but the most direct change by far is living with someone who isn’t in your family.
We have all heard the nightmare roommate stories — that roommate that never turns the lights off, can’t clean up a mess, always has people over or constantly plays loud music at all hours of the day. But Baylor offers a solution.
Within the housing application, Baylor offers a lifestyle-based roommate quiz to pair incoming freshmen in the residence halls. This quiz includes prompts that cover everything from how early your roommate goes to bed to how clean they are, but it’s not without its faults. With mental health at an all-time low among college students, it is essential to consider this when determining a roommate. The easiest way to factor that decision-making process into the quiz would be to integrate targeted questions about mental health preferences and needs, while also ensuring privacy.
In 2019, Baylor University’s Active Minds chapter conducted a mental health survey, which found that 73% of students with mental health conditions developed them on campus. Imagine if this number could begin trending in the right direction. Of course, the solutions being proposed in this article aren’t enough to bring that number down to zero; however, gaining a better understanding of how to accommodate students with mental health issues would be beneficial.
Currently, Baylor’s system focuses on surface-level compatibility, such as study habits and tidiness. Of course, these factors are important; mismatched lifestyles can lead to minor daily frustrations that inevitably boil over into larger-scale conflict. However, the questionnaire still overlooks a crucial aspect of well-being, mental health. A roommate who is insensitive to their counterpart’s potential triggers, like loud arguments that might trigger anxiety, or a roommate who might not respect boundaries, could turn the shared space into a source of constant stress.
Reforming the system doesn’t require a complete rebuild; instead, it requires building onto the current foundation. Baylor could start by adding elective sections to the quiz that allow students to elaborate on their mental health preferences. For example, there could be additional questions regarding noise sensitivity, willingness to accommodate quiet hours or roommates who would be willing to discuss mental health issues.
Students should be given the option to match with others who have similar experiences to foster mutual respect or understanding without forcing them to disclose personal information to one another. To protect students’ privacy, responses should be anonymized and used only for matching purposes, and clear disclosures should state that participation is optional and won’t affect housing status or university standing.
By prioritizing mental health in roommate matching, Baylor has the unique opportunity to transform nightmare roommate situations into partnerships that support and uplift roommates. This prioritization of mental health would also help reinforce other Baylor initiatives, such as the HealthyBearsTXT program, which provides mental health tips to students, faculty and staff.
This simple change to the roommate matching process could improve student retention rates, reduce overcrowding in Baylor’s current mental health infrastructure and help freshmen communities on campus become more positive than they already are.
Ideas are just ideas without implementation. To make this a reality, Baylor should implement this addendum to the roommate quiz for the upcoming class. By making this change, Baylor can be a trendsetter in higher education and make the university a more accommodating and safe place for those with mental illness.
