Freshman Jarid Fitch arrived at 9 a.m. on moving day. He was naturally nervous. He was about to begin a new part of his life, leaving the familiarity of home and moving in with a stranger.
He had boxes of belongings and hours of unpacking. A computer, clothing, pictures of high school friends, the gold ropes he planned to use bunch curtains. The struggle, Fitch thought as he glanced around 11-by-17 Allyn Hall dorm room, would be deciding what to put where.		  
But Fitch had more pressing thoughts on his mind that morning, those thoughts that any new person moving into the dorm gets upon receiving the long-awaited room assignment: What would his roommate be like? Would he be messy or neat? Talkative or quiet?
His main question, however, was the one he had grappled with for months: “What will he think when I tell him I’m gay

Photo by Sarah Thompson
Freshmen Matt Boedicker, left, and Jarid Fitch have a “completely normal roommate relationship,” even though Fitch is gay. “It has to do with personalities,” Boedicker says. “And being gay is not really a personality.”
Fitch had already told his Catholic parents, whom he says have gone to great lengths to conceal his homosexuality.
And, he says, although he had to risk another reaction, he also had to tell his new roommate. After all, he rationalized, anyone he lives with would find out sooner or later.
Several hours later, Matt Boedicker, a transfer student, arrived in the room with his parents and a lot of boxes.
“Nice to meet you,” Fitch said in that nervous-first-encounter sort of way as he shook Boedicker’s hand.
Boedicker’s parents left, and he began unpacking.
He started to set up his computer. Fitch, meanwhile, got ready to go out.
“I have a date tonight…” Fitch said cautiously. “And he and I will probably go for a walk, then come back here and talk.”
That’s how Fitch, in his roundabout way, told Boedicker he was gay.
Naturally, Boedicker was taken aback. A range of emotions hit him — disappointment, surprise, but mainly, “Aw, man.That was August. Now, as their first semester together ends, they’re still roommates. And they get along fine. They’re not best friends, but they keep their room clean and tell each other where they’re going and when they leave. “It’s just like normal now,” Boedicker says. Fitch adds, “It’s a completely normal roommate relationship.”

Photo by Sarah Thompson
A roommate walks in on her female roommate kissing a woman. This is one scenario that a roommate may find out that he or she is gay.

 
  Not all gay, lesbian or bisexual college students living in Kent State dorms are as lucky as Fitch. Traditionally, dorms — especially Terrace Hall, as police reports show — are not welcoming grounds for homosexual students. Harassment reports filed with Kent State police last year detailed unrelenting harassment, from derogatory words carved into doors to crank telephone calls and chants at night. This has made “coming out” — the phrase used in the gay community when disclosing sexual orientation — to a roommate in the dorms all the more difficult.

Photo by Helen Cunningham
Haverford College Apartments

Housing officers at colleges and universities are caught in a tough position during all of this. They want residents to be open and comfortable but have no clear-cut solutions for the problem because, as they point out, they don’t see the harassment actually happen.
“It’s more difficult with homosexuality because it’s not exactly a visual thing,” says Kenyon Bonner, assistant director of residence services at Kent State. “You can’t tell right off if someone is gay. So there are a lot of assumptions — a lot of uneducated assumptions — and that’s how a lot of trouble happens. It can be more difficult to get to the deeper cause of disputes.”

 

 

 Some colleges and universities across the country, in response, have established systems to combat incidents in residence halls. Harvard University, for example, states in a clause in its housing contract that potential roommates can request a room change if they do not like their roommates’ sexual orientation. A small number of liberal arts colleges are even opening co-ed rooms to accommodate gay and lesbian students who are uncomfortable living with heterosexual roommates. Kent State has not plans to adopt this policy.
Bonner says the current zero tolerance policy works fine. Kent State agrees….
Freshman Tiffany Graham still doesn’t know how to tell her roommate she’s bisexual. She says the issue is important enough that she doesn’t have a problem if her roommate learns of her sexual orientation through this article.
“You never know how comfortable someone’s going to be with it,” she says.
Graham “came out” her junior year of high school. Her parents still don’t know — that’s a whole other situation, she says — but so far everyone she’s told has been accepting.
But she still wants to tell her roommate. She says she knows she should.
“I’m getting tired of being so secretive about it,” Graham says. “Being a young person, sex is very prominent part of a person’s life, and I try not to have to hide my life.”

Photo by Sarah Thompson
Tiffany Graham, freshman justice studies major, had not discussed her sexual orientation with her roommate at the time this went to print.
Gay, lesbian and bisexual students say disclosing sexual orientation to a roommate poses a difficult question: Is being “out” worth the possibly of harassment?
Junior Kenny Manns, who lived in Terrace Hall two years ago, didn’t tell everyone on his floor that he was gay. His roommate, whom he knew from high school, already knew, as did some friends on the floor. As the semester wore on, Manns became more comfortable with his surroundings and more open. Soon others, whom Manns describes as “big, tough athletic types,” eventually learned.
  
It started with signs that said “faggot” on the bathroom door. But the 10 guys got bolder (and drunker at times, Manns says) and began calling his room and screaming his name “at the top of their lungs” late at night. By finals week of the spring semester, Manns was skipping showers because he was so intimidated.
“I’d tell my roommate, ‘If I’m not back in 15 or 20 minutes, come in and make sure I’m OK,’” he recalls. “I was afraid someone would realize I was in the shower alone and come in and beat me up.”
Manns, fearing for his safety, went to his residence assistant, Kent State police and residence service officials, who filed a report. Manns also went to Parking Services and received a special parking pass in front of Terrace Hall to escape easily if he felt threatened. The Office of Residential Services also offered him another room, which he declined because the timing was close to finals, and let him out of his housing contract for the following year.
Manns says the situation was unfortunate because his harassers never were punished because no one ever witnessed the incidents.

Photo by Sarah Thompson
Kenny Manns, junior music major, now lives in an apartment because of the harrassment he experienced while living in the dorms on campus.
"All the RA’s were very nice to me, but they all said the same thing as the campus police: ‘If we don’t catch them in the act, we can’t do anything,’” he says.
And that, Manns says, was frustrating.
He now lives off-campus. 		 
  For Fitch and Boedicker, the roommates from Allyn Hall, the key to their dorm relationship is a mix of communicating and understanding. Sexual orientation never affects their dorm life. Fitch still helps Boedicker with his homework, for example, and Boedicker takes out the trash.
“It has to do with personalities,” Boedicker says. “And being gay is not really a personality.”
For Boedicker, it took some adjusting. His brother and uncle are pastors in Bible churches, and he still follows his small-town Protestant upbringing.
“My dad talked about homosexuality a lot,” he says. “I mean, he wasn’t going to beat people up, but he didn’t think it was right.
“I guess that’s how I was raised; just because someone’s gay, I’m not going to make their life hell.”
One night in September, Fitch returned home late, depressed about a fight with his boyfriend, Andy. The two roommates started talking.

Photo by Sarah Thompson
Matt Boedecker, freshman computer science major, plays a computer game while his roommate, Jared Fitch, freshman secondary education major, listens to music from websites on his computer in the background.

“All of a sudden I was thinking about how Andy and I have started to forma solid relationship, and I had said, ‘We both want kids, so obviously, we’d have to adopt,’” Fitch recalls. “I said to Matt, ‘What do you think about that?’”
Boedicker said it’s not something he agrees with.
“I just don’t think it’s right,” he says.
And that was OK with Fitch.
“We have our differences,” he says. “Really, as long as I’m not going to wake up one night with him drawing up ‘Ways to Kill Jarid’ plans on his top bunk, I’m fine.”
Fitch is always willing to answer questions Boedicker has about gay culture. Once, he wanted to know what “fah-fah” was. (And he told him: An extremely effeminate gay man.)
Fitch says he knows his limits as well, knows that his roommate doesn’t want to hear every detail of his life.
“It’s interesting,” Boedicker says. “I like learning about different types of people. This just worked out well. We got lucky.”