Online matching would be a mistake

Web-based programs universities around the country are beginning to use to create "perfect" freshman year roommate matches carry with them high potential for balkanization of incoming students. Though the current roommate selection forms are too simple to create an ideal match, providing students with almost full control over their room and roommate selection is a mistake.

One of the most important aspects of the freshman experience is meeting peers who come from different backgrounds and have varying interests. Freshman dormitory life is an exercise in tolerance-building and mind-opening, in part because of forced diversity. Natural instinct would lead most freshmen to seek familiarity: roommates who have similar academic and extracurricular interests, backgrounds, and world outlooks. Unless the University placed them together, an engineer who plays soccer and grew up in the suburbs might never be exposed to the ideas and interests of a five-year MFA student from abroad. The homogenization of freshman dorm rooms would be a tragic loss to the freshman experience.