With no roommate-matching system, Queen’s assigns first-year roommates at random, turning the first-year ‘roomie’ experience into a game of chance.
Every year in early September, the intersection of Collingwood and Earl is filled with lines of parents and students hauling boxes from their cars, all on the same mission: to set their child free to fly the coop straight into independence at Victoria ‘Vic’ Hall—Queen’s most notorious party residence.
When it comes to first-year dormitories, roommates are a standard part of the residence experience. However, Queen’s lack of a roommate questionnaire or matching system prior to roommate assignment has proven problematic for some students.
Roommates are a standard part of the first-year experience. Unlike other Canadian universities such as Carleton University and St. Francis Xavier University, Queen’s doesn’t have a matching system during the roommate pairing process, other than allowing students to preselect a specific person before the term begins if they so desire.
Since Queen’s doesn’t use a matching system, students who don’t pre-select a roommate are often paired with complete strangers whose lifestyles may clash. The process leaves first-years with two choices: scramble to find someone in advance or take a gamble on living with someone they know nothing about.
For some students like Ava Lambe, ArtSci ’28, this unpredictable process didn’t end badly. Lambe tried to request a specific roommate, but when the friend she chose didn’t get accepted into residence, she wasn’t asked any further questions and was placed instead with two randomly selected roommates in a triple room.
Despite the initial setback, Lambe explained in an interview with The Journal, she got along well with both her roommates and plans to continue living with one of her first-year roommates, who has now become one of her best friends.
Even though Lambe and her two randomly selected roommates shared an overall positive experience, Lambe was quite surprised by the roommate selection process at Queen’s.
“The roommate selection process seemed odd. I requested a specific roommate, and she didn’t get accepted into residence and then that was it,” Lambe said. “I wasn’t asked to provide any information or interests to the school, unlike my friends at Carleton. I chose a dorm and was just placed with people.”
Due to the absence of a matching service, Queen’s has tried to mitigate roommate conflict by mandating roommates to create Roommate Agreements—written contracts with rules and boundaries outlined between roommates for the academic year. The agreements are put in place to deal with roommate difficulties and set some ground rules before the fall term begins.
“We provided a structured process to help students navigate roommate concerns. All roommates complete a Roommate Agreement at the start of the year to discuss expectations around shared space,” Queen’s Housing and Ancillary Services wrote in a statement to The Journal. “If a conflict arises, we encourage students to revisit their agreement and speak to their Don, and where necessary, a Residence Life coordinator who can help mediate conversations.”
While Queen’s encourages students to complete roommate agreements after move-in, it’s a relatively uncommon practice among Canadian universities to forego a roommate matching system—a choice some students express isn’t necessarily a proper solution. For example, Western University assigns roommates based on lifestyle compatibility, with questions about sleep schedules, study habits, and cleanliness.
Other Canadian universities, such as the University of Toronto, University of Alberta, and University of Calgary, use StarRez—a platform that streamlines roommate matching through surveys, self-selection tools, and automated pairing. Extending South of the border, Baylor University in Texas reported a 62 per cent higher match rate after incorporating lifestyle questions into their process.
For some students, even the simple question of sleep schedules would’ve gone a long way.
Ellie Sheppard, ArtSci ’26, respected and admired her first-year roommate, but she believes both their experiences would’ve improved had they completed a survey or roommate pairing questionnaire beforehand. Despite getting along well, the two had drastically different sleeping schedules, which meant they were often using the room for different purposes at opposite times of the day.
“I woke up a lot earlier than my roommate and because of this, I felt like I couldn’t get up and do my normal morning routine, because I didn’t want to wake her up. It threw me off because I couldn’t get ready properly or do things like blow dry my hair,” Sheppard said in an interview with The Journal. “I often waited around in the dark until she woke up and I could begin using the room normally without worrying about light or noise.”
For Sheppard, lifestyle-based questionnaire—espically one focused on sleep—would’ve made first-year a lot smoother for everyone involved including her hair.
“I definitely recommend that Queen’s uses questionnaires to pair roommates. The simple question of “are you a night owl” would’ve gone a long way for me in first-year, because my roommate and I were completely opposite in terms of sleep schedules,” Sheppard said.
While sleep can already be difficult in noisy residences like Vic Hall, some students like Renee Esco, ArtSci ’26, found themselves especially frustrated by roommates who regularly invite their significant others into their shared rooms to spend the night.
In Esco’s triple dorm room in Vic Hall, one of her roommates returned from winter break with her boyfriend—who ended up living in their shared space for almost a month.
While opinions surrounding overnight guests might not be categorized as a lifestyle choice, Esco explains that her and her roommates’ opposing perspectives reflect contrasting personal boundaries and expectations on room sharing that could’ve been rooted out through surveys and questionnaires.
The uninvited presence of a man in an all-female room led to some awkward moments for Esco—including when her father arrived to help her move back in after winter break and found her roommate’s boyfriend alone in the room, without Esco’s knowledge.
“When I moved back from winter break and I was moving stuff into my room, there was just a man in my room. I didn’t know how to explain that to my father,” Esco said in an interview with The Journal.
Because of the open layout of triple rooms, Esco had virtually no privacy while getting ready—despite a man she was uncomfortable around being present every night.
Vic Hall triple rooms cost $16,406.80 per roommate, according to Queen’s residence webpage, something Esco felt wasn’t worth the price if she was uncomfortable in the space. “If we’re paying this much money for a room, we want to feel safe. It got to a point where I couldn’t even change in my own room,” she said.
After Esco and one roommate raised concerns to the roommate in question about the lack of privacy caused by her boyfriend staying in the room, no changes were made, and they ultimately escalated the issue to their floor Don and Residence Life staff.
“[Having her boyfriend there all the time] was definitely a privacy issue and we didn’t establish proper boundaries,” Esco said. The roommate was eventually removed due to additional ongoing concerns, which reflected significant differences in personalities and lifestyles.
However, not all randomly assigned roommate stories ended in disaster. For students like Charlotte Ocon, ConEd ’27, the random draw turned out to be a perfect match.
Getting to know her first year roommates was one of the highlights of Ocon’s first-year at Queen’s. Placed in a triple room in Leonard Hall—affectionately known as ‘Lenny’—she was paired with two strangers who quickly became close friends.
“We didn’t have a single argument over the course of the year, which I feel is pretty rare,” Ocon said in an interview with The Journal. “We were all tidy and clean people so there were no arguments there. But I think most importantly, we had similar expectations for what we wanted our first year to be.”
Ocon has continued to live with her first-year roommate ever since. “I got really lucky because both roommates were great and we all got along for the entire year. One of them actually became my housemate for my entire time at Queen’s and one of my best friends, so it really worked out for me,” she said.
Their success as a roommate trio, Ocon says, came down shared expectations and a mutual understanding of what they each wanted out of their first-year at university. “We were all very social, so we all were open to having people over to our room or going out together and having fun,” Ocon said.
In terms of communication, randomly selected roommates worked in Ocon’s favour, placing the perfect amount of emotional distance to handle boundaries with confidence and respect. “I feel like randomly selected roommates were the best choice for me,” she said. “Even though I know not everyone gets as lucky as I did, it’s still what I recommend because you learn so much about communication.”
“When you’re living with people you don’t know, I think you communicate a lot more graciously and don’t immediately resort to fighting as you may with someone you’re close and comfortable with,” Ocon said.
Despite her positive experience, Ocon acknowledges that the process could be improved with more consideration for compatibility.
“However, I think a questionnaire about lifestyle choices would be beneficial for randomly selected roommates, so that you don’t end up with someone who is a polar opposite of you because then I think you’re kind of bound for failure,” Ocon said.
Students seeking like-minded peers can join Queen’s Living Learning Communities and Unique Communities (LLCs)—designated floors tailored to specific interests, such as a silent “Study Floor” or a “Creative Arts Floor” for arts enthusiasts. “The goal [of LLCs] is to foster a sense of community among students with similar academic or personal interests, providing an enriching space for collaborative learning and growth,” according to the LLC website.
While Queen’s doesn’t offer roommate matching services, it provides alternatives like LLCs and encourages the use of Roommate Agreements to establish and outline clear boundaries between roommates. “We recognize that identity and lived experience can influence how students experience shared living. While we do not publicly share details about individual cases, we are committed to supporting students who raise concerns related to equity, inclusion, or identity,” Queen’s Housing and Ancillary Services said.
Sheppard, Esco, and Ocon’s experiences highlight the various ways that roommates can make an impact. Each students’ stories have drawn attention to ways Queen’s could implement feedback to improve the experience of first-year roommates—whether that be by including a roommate matching service or another solution to better match students in lifestyles with one another.
Tags
First year experience, First Year in Focus, Queen's residence, roommates, Victoria ‘Vic’ Hall
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