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May 23, 2008, 01:14 PM ET
Tulane Signs Onto Online Roommate Self-Selection Service
Tulane University recently announced a partnership with RoommateClick, a service that allows incoming students to select roommates through a closed social network.
RoommateClick provides about 10 colleges with customized roommate-choosing networks, where students fill out a questionnaire regarding their living habits (cleanliness, smoking, etc.) and provide profile photos and other open-ended profile information about themselves. Students can then search the closed network to choose roommates if they don’t wish to be assigned matches by the housing department. The cost for universities to use this service is $5 to $10 per student on a sliding scale, according to Bobbi Babitz, CEO of RoommateClick parent company Lifetopia.
RoommateClick has several commercial competitors, including WebRoomz and Off-Campus Housing 101. Some colleges have created their own homegrown versions. Western Washington University, for example, has created a sophisticated tool called myRoommate that is integrated into the Sungard Banner system.
“People always call and ask for something like a roommate with the same religious beliefs. We always say we don’t ask that. We don’t want to know what people’s religious beliefs or sexual orientation or sexual identity are, and we don’t want to keep data on that,” said Karen M. Walker, assistant director of occupancy and assessment at Western Washington. “Now students who really needed to have a big degree of control on who their roommates are have this tool.”
Of course, students can always fall back on Facebook for background checks on potential and assigned roommates—which is exactly the reason why Tulane opted to use RoommateClick.
“Over the last few years we have seen such an increase in calls in July and August with requests to change rooms because of what students have seen on MySpace or Facebook,” said Marty Brantley, Tulane’s director of housing services.
“So we’ve been trying to find a product or service that can do a better job matching students on more criteria and do so in a Web environment familiar to students of this generation. We know students are still going to look at Facebook and MySpace and make comparisons to information there, but that’s really how the conversation started for us.”—Catherine Rampell
Categories: Social-Networking, Student-Life
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