Our roommate horror story contest winner is Rachel from Tufts University.  Here is her story:

The story of my freshman roommate starts with the room rules she sent me in July before we moved in. Just one week after we found out that we were going to be roommates–after a few awkward e-mail exchanges–my future roommate, Meghan (names have been changed), sent me an e-mail with our “agreed upon room rules.” The list was 10 rules long, none of which we agreed upon. To give you a sense of our “agreed room rules” my favorites include: 1. Quiet hours are from 11pm-7am, no phone calls after 10:30pm. 2. Our room shall be a sanctuary from temptations and pleasures. 3. There shall be no sexual activity or suggestive images in the room. 4. If you’re going to be out late, let the other person know, so know one worries 😛 5. There shall be no breaking of the law at the university, local, state and federal levels. Just so we are clear, I am not a criminal, I was the top of my class in high school and we were about to start our freshman year at a prestigious university. But I didn’t want to get things off on a bad foot before freshman year even started, so I didn’t complain about the rules. Instead, I moved into my dorm, offered to loft my roommate’s bed for her so she didn’t have to do it when she got to campus and I was fully prepared to follow “our” rules. I moved into my dorm a week earlier than Meghan for cross country pre-season training. Once she moved in, I quickly realized that she had no intention of following “our” room rules. I would tip-toe around the room quietly (with the lights off), getting ready for my 7am cross country practices, determined not to break our “quiet hours” rule, while Meghan would get home around 3 or 4am every morning, turn all the lights on and make a lot of noise. Once she realized I was asleep, as people normally are at 3 or 4am, she would apologize, but continue to make noise. This did not just last for Freshman Orientation. She continued to come home late throughout our entire first semester. I should also mention that Meghan did not believe in showering, except for Sundays before church. When she realized that she smelled, she would occasionally sponge bathe in the bathroom sink—a shared bathroom used by the other 12 girls on our hall. Meghan also had very long hair that would fall all over my carpet, which I would then have to vacuum every other day. On top of not showering and leaving her hair everywhere, Meghan also did not do her laundry. Once she started dating another freshman boy, she eventually did her laundry once a month. Actually, HE did her laundry. You see, she had a sore back and had to save her energy for playing her trumpet, so he carried her backpack for her, did her laundry once a month and spent as much time in our room as she did. Occasionally, Meghan, even though she knew I was Jewish, would leave me pictures of Jesus and Mother Theresa on my desk, in case I decided to see the light and convert. For the sake of space, I will end my story of Meghan, with one final remark. I did not stay in touch with Meghan after freshman year, but I did read an article in our campus newspaper about how she sued the university so she could have a dog on campus because it would make her happy. At first, I did not realize that the article was about my roommate, Meghan, because she changed her name. It turns out, her birth name also made her depressed, so she wanted to start over with a new name. Well that’s the highlights for my freshman year roommate.

We had to give an honorable mention to our runner up, Allison from Tufts (although we had to edit it a little):

I should have known I was going to have problems with Debbie when, on move-in day, she already had upwards of 80 Disney figurines, pictures and posters up. She had a hard time adjusting to college life and would routinely kick me out of the room to cry into her bible. Her mother would drive up to school with homeschool books to help Debbie study. One night I decided to sleep over at a friend’s room and give myself a break from Debbie. She did not take well to this. Apparently she had developed a dependency issue and could not fall asleep until I was back in the room so she stayed up all night and met me at the door with a prepared speech (written on notecards) when I came home. She went on for almost an hour about how cruel I was for doing that to her. This was also the night before my first big Chem midterms. I moved out on her after a month of this and never heard from her again.