It's the worst of latenight scenes: You return to
your dorm room after a night of studying or
partying and find your roommate gaining carnal
knowledge on the bed opposite yours. Unless you're
a serious voyeur and/or a total asshole, it means
finding alternate sleeping accommodations for the
night. You walk up and down the hallway, searching
for an open bed while grumbling about how you pay
so much damn money for a room that you've been
kicked out of.
You've been sexiled.
So when you're homeless for a night, what do you
do? Sleep in the lounge? Watch TV until it seems
safe to enter? Try to find your own source of
nookie — and a place to sleepover? Casually walk
in the room and act as if nothing unusual is
happening?
Regis, I'd like to phone a friend.
Elizabeth Santoro*, a junior at the University of
Washington, faced that situation with her former
roommate. She arrived at her room around 11 p.m.
with two friends to find her roommate naked,
engaging in phone sex with an outoftown
boyfriend. Startled and embarrassed, she went in
the room anyway to grab her jacket, and never
mentioned the situation again.
"It was uncomfortable for both of us then. To talk
about it more would have made it worse," she says.
Communication is the key to avoiding sticky
situations between roommates, but there's little
of that coming from the people running college
residence halls. Maybe it's because adults run
them, or maybe because they don't want to give
parents the impression the schools condone this
kind of behavior.
An informal survey of more than a dozen colleges
and universities found none with a policy on
sexile. Isn't it amazing that resident advisors
across the country are trained in every
theoretical situation, but there's no policy about
sex? They learn about generic "conflict
resolution", sure, but not sex conflicts.
"I don't know of any thing specific in RA
training," says Tom Gratz, an administrative
associate in Stanford's Residential Education
office. "There's nothing specific regarding that
situation."
But that doesn't mean resident advisors don't have
to deal with steamy sexile situations. Eric
Watson, an RA at Yale University, says the key to
avoiding nasty situations is keeping the lines of
communication open.
"If there is an issue regarding one roommate
wanting to have sex in the room, then they should
work out a system that is fair to both parties,"
Eric says. He obviously paid attention during
conflict resolution training.
"They need to set some boundaries on what is
acceptable and what they both can tolerate," Eric
adds.
The best source of advice on this topic, like so
many collegerelated topics, is an upperclassman.
It's one way to get the straight story without
having to filter out the political correctness.
Elizabeth had an intricate system set up with her
roommate last year. If one of them needed the
room, alone, for the night, they would draw a
smiley face on the dryerase board outside their
door. The copulating one would add teeth to the
face, with the number of teeth correlating to the
time the sexiled roommate would be free to return.
"It worked like a charm," Elizabeth says, though
she admits that the carefully thought out system
only had to be used once.
There seems to be a differing of opinion between
guys and girls on the politics of being sexiled.
With cultural stereotypes to thank, a man getting
laid generally warrants highfives, while women in
the same spot resort to sneaking in and out of
rooms to avoid being noticed.
Sam Philpot, a senior at Davidson College, would
often return to his room, girlfriend in tow, to
find his premed roommate fast asleep. "She would
always say 'I'm worried that he's going to wake
up', but I don't think he ever did," Sam says.
"The whole thing was staying kind of quiet. It's
fun to do that. It's a challenge."
Elizabeth agrees. "If you're with a guy in the
room, you don't want your roommate walking into
the middle of something steamy," she said. "With
guys, they don't care who knows."
Despite his apparent lack of consideration, Sam
offers a fair idea: Work out a system at the
beginning of the year. "If you're the type of
person who brings people back on a regular basis,
you need to make [your roommate] aware," he said.
"If you have a girlfriend and you're going to be
there every night, you have to work something out."
There are plenty of good systems for letting your
roommate know to stay out — and you don't need an
"If this room's arockin', don't come a knockin'"
sign. It can be as basic as a sock on the doorknob
or a symbol on the dryerase board. But it should
be something so simple that you'll it remember
after a night of debauchery.
And if you find that three's a crowd a little too
often in your room, there's another easy solution:
Be creative and find somewhere other than your bed
to do the nasty.
*All names have been changed.
Reid Epstein lives in constant fear of sexile.
