Whether they are a blessing or a curse, many of us have had to live with roommates at some point in our lives. If that point is yours right now at Florida Atlantic, then you may have one or two bad roommate stories already under your belt.

For those of us that don’t have a horror story — or just can’t look away from a bad situation — the University Press has you covered. We asked students about their worst experiences in the FAU dorms, and this is what they had to say.

Jared Johnson, a sophomore majoring in secondary education

Dorm: University Village Apartments

As a sophomore, Jared Johnson had already settled into college life. But for the rest of this semester, he had to keep his room locked — ever since one of his roommates urinated on him.

“So one night [my roommates] have a small party while I’m out. I come back and see that everyone’s pretty drunk,” Johnson said, adding that he later went to sleep. “I’m in bed and I wake up at around 2 in the morning to a sensation of warm water falling on my legs. I look up to see [my roommate] with his flaccid penis peeing on my legs.”

“Apparently he was too blackout drunk to find the bathroom and he planned on peeing out my window, but he didn’t make it,” said Johnson. “He eventually stops to my surprise and waddles over to my dresser, pulls out the bottom drawer and pees all over my clothes. Then he leaves and locks his door.”

Johnson stayed up until 5 a.m. so he could clean up the mess. “He doesn’t remember any of it and to this day he says he didn’t do it,” he said.

He didn’t report the incident to the resident assistants, but told the UP he wishes he did. “I just started living with them and I attested it to them just being drunk that night. This was before I knew how bad they really were. This was before, when I was a nice, naive person living with three other guys. Before I started locking my door at night.”

Johnson decided not to move out because the semester is almost over. “I sleep over at my girlfriend’s a lot or my friends’. They sleep during the day and I at night so I barely see them. No point in moving.”

His roommates have done more than just pee on him — they leave the common room messy, pile up dishes for weeks and even drew penises, vaginas and swastikas on his door while he was away on vacation.

“These four are the only ones I’ve had this much trouble with out of the six I’ve lived with,” he said. “This is also the last year I’ll stay in FAU housing. I’m not going to pay all this money to stay with people like this.”

Channel Jones, a senior majoring in early care and education

Dorm: Innovation Village Apartments North

After leaving Florida Gulf Coast University, Channel Jones came to FAU for a new experience. When she moved into her dorm her first week, she didn’t get what she expected — instead, she had to deal with a constant mess, plus a roommate with a possible cocaine addiction and her live-in boyfriend.

“I came in and the place was just disgusting,” Jones said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Okay, let’s not freak out too soon — a dirty place can be cleaned, dishes can be washed.’”

But it was more than just a messy room.

“As time went on, I noticed that she was really heavy into drugs, and her boyfriend was always there — like, he lived there,” Jones told the UP. “Nobody ever bothered to do anything about it or to get them any type of help.”

This wasn’t the first time the roommate had issues in her dorm. According to Jones, the roommate brought a cat into her last dorm, set off the fire alarm and tried to cover it up.

Her roommate later had to participate in a meeting with housing because of the pet she kept in her dorm the previous semester. According to Jones, she placed the blame on her boyfriend since he didn’t live there, and it would be easier for housing to kick him out than to make her move out.

“She obviously had to be using [her boyfriend] as a cover to stop herself from getting kicked out,” said Jones.

After living with her roommate for two weeks, Jones felt fed up. She contacted her RA, Olinese Augustin, and told her that she didn’t feel safe with the roommate and her boyfriend around all the time.

But after talking with Augusin, nothing changed. The RA did not respond to requests for comment.

Jones also emailed Morgan Minard, the FAU hall director of Innovation Village Apartments North, about the issues involving the roommate’s drug use and the constant presence of her boyfriend. The senior said that nothing came from those emails.

The UP reached out to Minard, but was redirected to Media Relations Manager Kelsie Weekes, who did not respond to requests for comment.

“Once nothing was done about it, I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to move out.’ Honestly, I could have stayed home for this,” she said. “I didn’t need to come and pay this money and get grants to go to a place where I don’t feel comfortable or safe.”

So, she submitted a room change. But even after transferring out of the dorm, Jones is still worried about her old roommate.

“It’s upsetting … Drugs [are] a serious issue, and when you’re constantly on drugs like coke and heroin and all that, they take you places that you never thought you would go before. For her to be doing that here — she’s putting herself in danger and she’s putting the rest of us in danger.”

Jones was disappointed with how the RAs handled her situation.

“For the sake of the entire dorm, all eight floors of IVA North, I feel like somebody should be going around and checking all of us and making sure we’re OK,” she said. “That’s what they’re there for, right?”

“I feel like they [FAU] really needs to step up in the RA department,” Jones continued. “If you’re going to be an RA, go around. Make sure you meet your students. And even if they don’t need anything from you, make sure you are available.”

FAU Executive Director of Housing and Residential Life Larry Faerman said if students aren’t happy about a living situation, they need to speak to the housing staff.

“[The students] should engage their resident assistant, that’s why we have the staff that we do. And they need to mitigate what is truly a ‘horror’ versus a compromise,” Faerman told the UP.

If contacting the resident assistant isn’t an option, he recommends reaching out to other housing staff, such as a housing coordinator.

“I think that we really try to have our staff address student concerns as they are brought to our attention,” said Faerman. “Not all students bring concerns to our attention, and that’s just a reality.”

Students who want to change rooms can submit a transfer request through FAU’s housing website after the first two weeks of classes and before the final month of the semester.

Facebook Stories

We reached out to Facebook asking for you to comment with your own horror stories. Here’s what some students had to say:

Emily Rosen, junior sociology major

Dorm: Glades Park Towers

“My freshman year my roommate was drunk every day of the week and never went to class. Her boyfriend would drive down from Orlando every Thursday and stay until Monday. He had awful smelling feet that stunk up the whole room and they would have sex while I was there. Within the first week, the hand towel I had put in the bathroom had been used to sop up her puke.

Then I moved, but this wasn’t the last time. I had a double to myself, which was great. However, the two sorority girls I lived with absolutely refused to lock the front door or carry their keys. There was a certain football player they were friendly with that would let himself in and just do whatever he wanted. He came in late one night, and although they refused to lock the front door, locked their bedroom door? So this 6-foot-something football player was hanging in our suite yelling and pounding on their bedroom door. After being screamed at and having passive aggressive notes left for me about how ‘unnecessary’ it is to lock the front door, I moved a final time.”

Andrea Vigil, junior psychology major

Dorm: Innovation Village Apartments North

“Sooooo my sophomore year I lived in IVAN with three other suitemates. One day my roommate and I were making pasta and accidentally used the other people’s sauce, considering it was the same brand, and when we found out we immediately replaced it. Well, they weren’t pleased so a whole argument broke out, which ended up in one of the roommates getting in my face and threatening to hit me. I ran to my RA and they ended [up] moving me to another room.

Well, after my room change I was paired with a prostitute, not even exaggerating. She brought older men into the room and smoked weed, got drunk and did crack cocaine. Some of the guys stayed over the night and in the morning when I woke up they were in the kitchen, not fully dressed, helping themselves to my and my other roommate’s food. It was a disgusting environment and RAs refused to do anything until they had proof. Like how much proof is necessary to do something? Well turns out this roommate had been arrested multiple times, stole money from my other suitemates and was under investigation. I ended [up] moving out mid-semester and commuted from Miami to Boca everyday.”

Brittany Ferrendi is the features editor of the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet her @BFerrendi.