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Brian Ku
11 February 2015
English 2
De Piero

The Fault in Our Roommates

Colleges tend to pair up students in dorms based on very brief guidelines, and dont tend
to give much thought into it. Students are asked to take a survey and are expected to have a great
match based on their answers to a couple questions. This is often not the case, and after a while,
tensions become high with roommates, stress builds up, and roommates fight and cant stand
each other. Keeping the Peace by Rosemary Counter and the Onions piece Report: 45% Of
All Randomly Paired Freshman Roommates Now At Breaking Point both tackle problems with
random roommates in college dormitories, but in very different ways. The two articles both focus
on the same topic, but have entirely different impressions based on the specific moves that both
authors favored.
Academic texts are typically more boring than those in popular culture, and that proves
true in Keeping the Peace. Rosemary Counter writes in a fashion very similar to a news article.
She goes very in depth of the problems at hand and offers many solutions that can help out
people. The taste of Counters piece was very vanilla, it was like a typical article that most
people experience often, it included some background information, presented the problem,

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offered a couple solutions, and then ended with a corny line. Keeping the Peace is about the
flaws in the college dormitory system. Counter first illustrates an example that is relatable to her
audience, college students, where a freshman is stuck with a weird roommate, who follows her
around everywhere. The example she uses is not that great. Kyle D. Stedman does a much better
job at creating relevant and fun examples in his piece Annoying Ways People Use Sources.
Stedman is able to link all the problems with sources that people use to a vivid example that
allows his reader to grasp what his point more effectively. His naming of the annoyance gives the
reader a bit of a clue of what he is talking about, and then he goes on with a few sentences that
he relates to that misuse of sources. For example, his annoyance, Armadillo Roadkill, has a great
short story that comes with it, Everone in the car hears it: buh-BUMP. The driver insists to the
passengers, But that armadillo- I didnt see it! It just came out of nowhere! (Stedman, 244). He
relates the dropping in of the armadillo to the dropping in of a quote without giving background
information first, which interests his audience.
After Counter successfully implicates a mediocre example into her work, she gets to the
target of her article, the failures of the college dormitory system. Counter detests the
questionnaire method that pairs roommates together, asserting that The old questionnaire
method, quaint in this modern era of online matchmaking, is increasingly unreliable when
matching university students in residence (Counter). One problem with the questionnaire
method is that people can be dishonest on it and the person who shows up on the first day isn't
always the person on paper. People imagine who they'd like to be, not who they actually are
(Counter).

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Another problem is that helicopter parents, parents that hover around their children,
often very protective, can influence the answers that the students write down, but the biggest
problem is probably the need for thoroughness in the questionnaire. Helicopter parents will
influence the answers of some students, especially if theyre looking over the students shoulder
as they complete the questionnaire, but the biggest problem is that randomly paired roommates
can have similar views on what they want to be taken from. Counter also contemplates a room
change, but considers it the worst case scenario. A room change, however tempting, is
considered a worst-case scenario; it's a hassle for schools, disruptive for residences, and getting
along is a much-needed life skill that schools hope to teach (Counter). Schools also provide
services to help students with their roommate problems, so it makes the moving of dorm rooms
rare but that's not to say everyone else is getting along just fine -- Kilfoil estimates a full 20 per
cent of the thousand students in her residence never want to see each other again after first year
(Counter).
Counter also believes social media to be a big problem as to why it is difficult for
roommates to communicate. She then gives a couple more solutions that other universities have
adapted. Saint Marys began changing more rooms from doubles to singles, and the University of
Toronto implemented Roommate Finder, which is somewhat like social media, with each student
having their own profile, along with much more intimate questions that are asked to allow people
to find a better roommate. Some of the questions include Do you pay bills as soon as they come
in or do you wait a month? Do you do your dishes right after you finish eating or can they sit
there a few days? Are you open to sharing possessions or should your roommate never touch
your stuff without asking? (Counter). Even though Counters article is not as attention attracting
as the Onions piece, it has real facts. Counter doesnt go about finding evidence like Lunsford

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suggests in Finding Evidence, but she reaches out to various staff members of different
universities and asks them what they have done to combat the questionnaire method.
The Onions piece on bad roommates is a much much interesting read. The article had
much clearer moves, and the combination of hyperbole mixed in with satire grasps the reader,
and allows them to have fun while reading. It brings to attention actual things that are happening
right now in college dormitories, but also highlights the whininess of college freshman, for
example, According to our data, nearly half of first-year college students dont know if they can
stand one more day in their dorm room, citing issues ranging from a lack of personal space, to
concerns about their roommates hygiene, to irritation with the roommate taking their food from
the shared mini-fridge (The Onion). While the Onion does a great job at making college
freshman look stupid, they also present real things that happen with bad roommate relationships,
some freshmen residents had already met with an RA and explored alternative housing options,
others were taking the opportunity to return home on the weekends or spend nights sleeping at a
significant others dormitory (The Onion). The use of hyperbole in the article is also perfect,
The Onion utilizes hyperbole in order to get its point across, but also to humor its audience. The
Onion is known for its satirical pieces and the hyperbole in the article allows the article to
achieve an Onion classic touch. At this point, the situation for hundreds of thousands of
freshmen is beyond the point of reconciliation. Within days, we expect many of these strained
relations to completely blow up, likely after one of the roommates once again comes back to the
room after midnight and immediately turns on another loud jam band song (The Onion). The
Onion is similar to Counter in that they both also end with a corny line. In the article by the
Onion, it ends with the disaffected college students were taking some comfort in the knowledge

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that they would get to complain about having had the worst freshman roommate with every
acquaintance they meet for the next several decades (The Onion).
Non-academic pieces can accomplish a lot more than scholarly texts can, but the same
also holds true the other way around. Based on what the reader is looking for, each text will suit
a person better based on what theyre goal of reading the article is. The more satirical article by
The Onion is able to bring a laugh out of readers. Its also much better at bringing about different
topics and different specific viewpoints. The Onion was able to bring some truth out, but was
also secretly laughing at college freshmen on the inside. Both have their pros and cons, the
Onion captivated the reader, while also bringing some light on the subject, while Counters piece
brought about a lot more information to the table. She did research, asking many different
universities what they were doing to change the roommate pairing process. Counter had many
credible sources, allowing for a more professional mood. The Onion also had sources, but they
were made up, and there was no purpose to the article except for perhaps dry humor. While the
two pieces were both excellent articles, Report: 45% Of All Randomly Paired Freshman
Roommates Now At Breaking Point by The Onion is a much easier, funnier read than Keeping
the Peace by Rosemary Counter. Both articles serve different purposes, reading Keeping the
Peace, which is a research article, would only be for scholarly purposes, but Report: 45% Of
All Randomly Paired Freshman Roommates Now At Breaking Point is for the average person
looking for a quick funny read. The two articles both focus on the same topic, but have entirely
different impressions based on the specific moves that both authors favored.

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Thesis Statement
Use of Evidence
from Articles
Use of Course
Readings
Analysis
Organization/Struc
ture
Attention to
Genre/Conventions
and Rhetorical
Factors
Sentence-level
Clarity, Mechanics,
Flow

Did Not Meet

Expectations

Met
Expectations

Exceeded
Expectations

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Other Comments
I thought you did a great job of incorporating textual
evidencenice work on that front.
To get this to the next level, Id like you to be superduper clear about what, exactly, youre arguing
whatever that it is, it should appear in your thesis
statement so that yor reader can get a firm idea of
where you want to take them (and what points youll
be using to make your case).
Id also like you to take a look at your topic sentences
they should be idea anchors for your paragraph.
Wheres your Works Cited??
All told, I was very pleased with this.

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Z
B+